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UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. 



The Spirit of the New 
Education 



BY 

LOUISA PARSONS HOPKINS 

Supervisor Boston Public Schools 

AUTHOR OF "how SHALL MY CHILD BE TAUGHT " "OBSERVATION LESSONS 

IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOLS" "HANDBOOK OF THE EARTH " 

" EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY " ETC. 






.k' 



BOSTON 
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS 

10 MILK STREET 
1892 



COPYKIGHT, 1S92, BY LEE AND ShEPARD 



All Rights Reserved 



The Spirit of the New Education 



C. J. PETERS & SON, 

Typographers anp Ei.ectrotypers, 

145 High Street, Boston 



TO 

THE FOLLOWING LEADERS OF EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT 

AND METHOD, WHOM THE AUTHOR COUNTS 

AMONG HER FRIENDS AND INSPIRERS, 

Ojis Book is Dftn'cateti : 

Col. Thomas Wentworth Higgixson 
Mrs. Pauline Agassiz Shaw 

Gen. Francis A. Walker 

Mrs. Mary Hemenway 

Pres. James MacAlister 



WORKS BY 

LOUISA PARSONS HOPKINS, 

Teacher of Normal Methods in the Swain 
Free School, Neiv Bedford. 

• 

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Methods in Geography $0.50 

NATURAL-HISTORY PLAYS. — Dialogues 
and Recitations for School Exhibitions. 

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PSYCHOLOGY IN EDUCATION 50 

PRACTICAL PEDAGOGY ; or, The Science of 

Teaching Illustrated net, i.oo 

MOTHERHOOD. Full gilt 1.50 

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MARY SCHOOLS. One vol. Cloth. . 7iet, .75 
Four Parts. Paper. Each Part 35 

♦ 

LEE AND 8HEPARD. PUBLISHERS, 

BOSTON. 



PREFACE 



The various addresses which make up this vol- 
ume were prepared casually since the author has 
been connected with the Boston schools, for 
occasions beyond the regular demands of school- 
supervision, the only official document being the 
Supervisors' Report of 1889. Such courses of lec- 
tures and talks as have been given to the teachers 
in the discharge of more formal duties may at 
some time be compiled as a supplementary book, 
more direct and practical in its nature than this. 

Notwithstanding the segregation of subject in 
these papers, they have an underlying unity of 
thought and motive which warrants their presen- 
tation as an educational treatise. They are an 
outgrowth of vital relations with the educational 
reforms of the day ; they represent advanced 
theories, and have by right a strong flavor of dis- 
cussion and active participation in questions con- 
stantly pressed upon the consideration of thoughtful 
teachers ; this gives them a realistic element, and 

5 



6 PREFACE 

perhaps too strenuous forms of expression. If 
certain lines of thought are reiterated conspic- 
uously, it is because they are forced to the front 
by the needs of the schools and the demands of 
progressive ideals. The great problem of the 
development of character may have weighted the 
expression too heavily, but its importance and 
that of the law of evolution of the moral nature 
have grown into the author's apprehension as 
all-inclusive. 

The necessity for a clear comprehension of the 
nature and growth of the child in all his activities 
has never been other than a primal fact to the 
author's mind, and in the rich opportunities for ob- 
servation which present associations have brought, 
this necessity has been demonstrated and illus- 
trated so forcibly as to add earnestness to what- 
ever the author has been called to say about 
educational principles and methods. 

The author's grateful thanks are due to those 
whose names appear in the dedication for their 
most ready and cordial permission. 

L. P. H. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE. 

Address at opening of Mechanics' Fair .... 9 

Remarks at the Manual-Training Conference . 20 

Address before the Ladies' Physiological Insti- 
tute 29 

Opening of Discussion before the New England 

Women's Club . 50 

Address before the Moral Education Association, 60 

Address before the Massachusetts Teachers' 

Association, Nov. 26, 1887 72 

Address to Portland Teachers during a Presi- 
dential Election 102 

Address before the Woman's Education Associa- 
tion 122 

Address before the Social Scie.vce Club ... 141 

Address at the National Teachers' Contention, 149 

Address before the Woman's Educational and 

Industrial Union i6r 

Addresses at the Graduation of Kindergarten 

Normal Classes 185 

7 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Address before the Sunday Coterie of the 

Woman's Union, Feb., 1889 208 

Extracts from Report of Board of Supervisors, 

1889 226 

Address to Teachers at Lynn and Elsewhere . 252 

Address at the Swain Free School, New Bed- 
ford, 1882 262 



MANUAL TRAINING 



ADDRESS AT OPENING OF MECHANICS' FAIR 



Mr. President : It is good to know how early 
in the history of the State the idea of industrial 
education was planted. For seventeen successive 
triads this Association has presented a grand 
object-lesson of industrial and mechanical training, 
of progressive achievement in practical invention 
and artistic skill, which must have had a vast edu- 
cative influence. It is strange that our pedagogi- 
cal leaders have not seized upon the lesson, and 
incorporated its methods in the schools, more 
promptly and more widely than we can boast to-day. 

It has been difficult to escape from the tra- 
ditions of an exclusively book education. The 
grammar schools, as their name indicates, have 
tied the child to the dead past, and confined him 
to the mediaeval form of brain activity and 
thought expression, until his connective tissues 
have ceased to be sensitive to the environment of 
nature, and he forgets the material and laws that 
touch him on every side : he observes nothing ; he 
discovers nothing ; he constructs nothing. 

9 



lO THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

Is not the time already come when the schools 
shall take the hint of the great industrial awaken- 
ing which this exposition represents, and put the 
child face to face with nature, — his material in 
one hand and his tool in the other? To observe, 
to think, and to express ; to assimilate for his own 
growth the knowledge which nature offers, and 
to communicate for the growth of other minds that 
which he has made his own ; in other words, to 
relate the child to nature, to man, and to God : 
this is the province of education. 

For the environment of the child is his natural 
and best means for development. His curiosity 
about things which he sees, about processes which 
he perceives, about purposes which he apprehends, 
constantly stimulates his mental and spiritual 
growth, and calls out his active powers of expres- 
sion. This exercise means growth of power ; in 
a word, evolution. The schools can only furnish 
methods of evolution by supplementing the train- 
ing of nature. 

How far have we carried into our Boston schools 
these manual-training methods } The first effort 
in this direction was the establishment of classes 
in wood-work, under the auspices of the Industrial 
School Association, in 1876, and the adoption by 
the School Board of this department in the Dwight 
School, under Master James A. Page, whose report 
of it during the years 1881 and 1882 is among the 



MANUAL TRAINING II 

documents of the School Board, and shows the 
work to have been highly satisfactory in all 
respects, physical, intellectual, and moral. Mr. 
Page advises that the shop be placed in every 
grammar school ; the instruction in the hands of a 
specialist, and the general direction in the hands 
of the master. One sentence in Mr. Page's report 
gives the true philosophy : " There can be no thor- 
oughly clear and enlightened brain without the 
cultivated hand." 

This movement in the Dwis^ht School was sue- 
ceeded by a carpentry course in the Latin School 
building, open to boys, who should elect it, from all 
the grammar schools in the city ; and this course 
still continues with a special teacher. 

In 1883 the boys of the Eliot School were 
admitted to manual-training classes at the Indus- 
trial Home by invitation of its managers, and con- 
sequent action of the School Board. In 1885 Mrs. 
Pauline Agassiz Shaw offered free manual instruc- 
tion to girls and boys at the North Bennet Street 
Industrial School. Classes in cookery, sewing, 
clay-modelling, shoemaking, printing, and carpen- 
try, have been attended, in response to that offer, 
by pupils selected from several grammar schools, 
as ordered by the School Committee, from that 
day to this ; and hundreds of thousands of dollars 
have been expended in the cause of manual train- 
ing for the school-children of Boston by Mrs. 



12 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

Shaw during the past fifteen years, including her 
free kindergartens, which she gave to the School- 
Board of Boston a few years ago. Where is the 
parallel for such splendid laboratory work in edu- 
cational methods, conceived, carried out, and 
bestowed freely, by one individual for the benefit 
of the public schools ? 

Cooking-schools and instruction in sewing were 
also initiated and fostered by private generosity, 
under the superintendence of Mr. Robert Swan, 
master of the Winthrop School, and others. Mrs. 
Mary Hemenway founded, supported, and, in 1886, 
gave to the city of Boston, cookery training- 
schools and well-equipped school-kitchens, the 
results of her lavish experimental work. At pres- 
ent sewing is taught to all the girls, and cooking 
to all whose parents request it, in every grammar 
school in Boston. 

Superintendent Seaver presented to the School 
Committee of 1889 an exhaustive report on man- 
ual-training schools, with a detailed plan for a 
Mechanic Arts High School : this school awaits 
an appropriation of money for its establishment, 
as ordered by the School Committee. 

When the kindergartens became incorporated 
with our public-school system, manual training 
may be said to have been established as a method 
of instruction, since it is an essential and charac- 
teristic element in Froebel's philosophy. It was 



MANUAL TRAINING 1 3 

inevitable that its introduction into the primary 
schools should not be long delayed. After some 
individual initiation of its main features in certain 
primary classes by one of the supervisors, it was 
ordered by the School Committee for the primary 
schools of two districts ; and Mr. M. T. Pritchard, 
master of the Comins School, entered into the 
formulation and elaboration of the work in his 
primary classes with great enthusiasm, showing 
such satisfactory results at the end of the first 
year of its operation, that a manual-training course 
was made a permanent feature of all primary- 
school instruction at the beginning of the present 
year ; and we have reason to expect a similar 
course, adapted to advanced grades, projected into 
the grammar schools before another year, thus 
carrying up kindergarten methods on certain lines 
of manual training, not heretofore connected with 
grammar-school instruction, as far as the high 
schools. 

Mr. James S. Murphy, chairman of the Manual- 
Training Committee for several years, did very 
able service to the cause. Free normal instruc- 
tion in slojd, as well as other courses of construc- 
tive work, was last year, and still is, provided by 
Mrs. Shaw for the primary and grammar school- 
teachers of Boston. To this brief review of the 
history of manual training in our public schools, I 
would add the acknowledgment of a great impulse 



14 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

in the direction of physical training, through a 
conference held a year ago in Boston, by Mrs. 
Mary Hemenway, for a discussion of methods 
and of the educational value of physical training. 
Some of the most valuable contributions to ped- 
agogical science ever presented in this country 
were embodied in the papers called out by that 
conference ; and this was supplemented by free 
normal instruction, at Mrs. Hemenway's expense, 
for the teachers of Boston, in the Ling gymnastics, 
which were subsequently adopted for all the 
schools. The final outcome of this movement, so 
far as the public schools are concerned, is the 
recent appointment of Dr. Hartwell as director of 
physical training in the Boston public schools. 

Thus, you see, Mr. President, the lesson your 
honored Association has set before us as we have 
so far learned, and are ready for new inspiration. 
Our faces are set toward the light. To-day we 
are again presented with this complex object-les- 
son of human skill and art. In this proud array, 
this great opportunity of study, we see not '' the 
gross, the torpid bulk," but the united product 
of material and intelligence; the transmutation of 
earthly matter by spiritual force ; the expression of 
human thought for purposes of human develop- 
ment ; structure crystallized by human motive and 
vitalized by religious fire. How stimulating is 
such a study of form and adaptation ! We stand 



MANUAL TRAINING I 5 

before a great mechanical invention with awe : it 
holds within itself the unfolding of thought, the 
blossoming of an ideal, the actuality of a dream. 
Through years of patient faith, that inspiration 
has waited in the brooding brain for its comple- 
tion in structure ; we see in it a demonstration of 
the divine possibilities of human thought and 
skill. For free human thought pursues the track 
of divine thought, and searches out its secrets ; 
the mechanism of the heavens and earth, of plant 
and animal organisms, of that consummate ma- 
chine, the human body, all are repeated in these 
complicated contrivances which carry on our in- 
dustries and unite man with his environment. 
Man has joined himself to his natural sources of 
supply. The study of works of art and human 
invention is no less necessary to the complete de- 
volopment of constructive power than is the study 
of nature. We must put ourselves in communica- 
tion with the ideals of other minds ; let us welcome 
the opportunity brought to our national life by the 
pouring in of all types of thought, all modes of ex- 
pression, and all the diversities of social and reli- 
gious feeling. We must find and emphasize the 
lines of contact and not of division, if we would 
fuse and nationalize such an accumulative and 
heterogeneous material of population as is pouring 
into our schools, and evolve a cosmopolitan peo- 
ple. Away with disintegrating distinctions ! 



1 6 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

For truth in all its perfect round 
Unites each clear, sweet arc of sound; 
And o'er its crystal sphere shall climb 
Each God-ward faith and hope sublime,— 

Each creed a tongue 

Of praise, is rung 

To universal harmonies. 

Each race, each individual, must be able to con- 
tribute his share to the supply of common needs, 
and add to the aggregate his personal force, his 
productive energy, the help of his arm, his brain, 
his way of looking at things, and the power of his 
ideals. 

But nature is the supreme object-lesson of in- 
dustrial education, because in every organic form 
of life the observer is confronted with a divine idea 
corresponding to his power of apprehension. 
Here is the type of form, the suggestion of mech- 
anism and adaptation, the model of contrivance and 
of completed purpose. The plan of the leaf -factory, 
the coil of the tendril, the leverage of the sunbeam, 
the mathematics of the crystal, the enginery of the 
brain, the telegraphy of the cortex-cell, challenge 
our comprehension. The child learns from nature 
the alphabet of form, and tries to spell with the 
line, the surface, and the solid, his first syllables in 
the vocabulary of construction. Mechanism and 
art offer a universal language, and make a free 
plane of contact with humanity. Structure is the 
completed expression of thought. Structure 



MANUAL TRAINING 1 7 

adapted to function means a personal, originative 
impulse, a logical creation, a sequence of individ- 
ual thought, desire, and will, with a possibility of 
its communication. Let the child then receive 
the stimulus of well-directed observation of natural 
forms and processes : his curiosity is aroused ; he 
investigates, experiments, constructs, invents ; 
ideals of design and adaptation stir his brain and 
agitate his nerve-centres ; his hands grow restless 
with the impulse for originative work ; deny his 
constructive activities free play, and this restless- 
ness finds vent in the exercise of his destructive 
instincts : this is the significance of much of the 
moral warp exhibited in school-life, which is much 
better met by occupation than by punishment. 

Occupation, although in a sense the passive side 
of manual training, is yet the salvation of disci- 
plinary methods. Give the child a tool, you at 
once differentiate him from the animal ; he begins 
to feel his human capacity and his human relations ; 
he wants to work out his ideas and give tangible 
shape to his thought, to communicate what he 
knows, and become a unit in the unity of human 
brotherhood : for him, the evolution of soul has 
reached an appreciable stage. He is connected 
with his era and ready for his life-work, for which 
the school must prepare every child. 

This is an industrial age ; the old school-methods 
are out of joint with the times ; all our industrial 



1 8 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

and social difficulties arise from the want of adjust- 
ment of each generation of men to the genius of 
their day. Our educational problem is a problem 
of race, of government, of adaptation ; it touches 
kingdoms ; it reaches into practical science ; we 
are discovering our material ; we are finding our 
way into our sub-soil supplies, and getting our fin- 
gers into the core of things; we must be ready for 
all our connections, and know the whole ground by 
experience. Fraternal industry is the watchword 
of our times. A few principles and simple tools 
give the key to all the trades and arts ; the univer- 
sal language of structure is a medium of communica- 
tion between all peoples, and makes the world one. 

The training of the body, mind, and soul, involves 
a connected application of stimuli, because all parts 
of the human organism are so closely related and 
interactive. Sense training and muscular training 
must reach nerve training, and nerve training 
means brain training; all must work together to 
evolve human power. The physical brain itself 
betrays any lack of hand-development, and tells to 
the anatomist the story of the disused faculty. 
The brain-centres not built up by motor action fail 
in their radical completeness, and are dwarfed in all 
their activities. 

But it is an adjunct to moral training that man- 
ual training has its inclusive value. " All is for 
thee, O Soul ! " 



MANUAL TRAINING 1 9 

Manual and physical training offer to us a new 
and more thorough solution of the moral problems 
of school education. Orderly hand-work is regen- 
erative, when all directly ethical means at our dis- 
posal are of no avail. This educative power, both 
intellectual and moral, is what concerns us most in 
the consideration of manual training in our element- 
ary schools. The material advantages of indus- 
trial education are so plain, that he who runs may 
read : it makes the world rich, prosperous, and 
progressive. In all its issues, social, political, and 
industrial, it is good : it makes happy homes, it 
builds up a united people ; it is like a tree planted 
by rivers of waters whose leaves are for the healing 
of the nations. Yet, in arguing for its adoption, I 
prefer to keep the broad highway of educational 
motive, holding close to my heart this alabaster 
box of very precious ointment ; and while I hear 
the clamor of the materialist, of the utilitarian, or 
even of the philanthropist, saying, " Why was not 
this ointment sold for three hundred pence and 
given to the poor "^ " I answer : Because it is 
dedicated to a loftier purpose, a more inclusive 
beneficence ; to the generation, expression, and 
interchange of thought ; to the evolution of soul ; 
to the union of the human with the divine. 



DISCUSSION ON KINDERGARTEN 
AND MANUAL TRAINING 



REMARKS AT THE MANUAL-TRAINING 
CONFERENCE 



When I enter a kindergarten, I feel that I am in 
the first stage of the general public-school educa- 
tion. I think we are apt to forget that the kin- 
dergarten is not an institution entirely separate 
from all other schools, but only the first start in 
the school education of the child. I like to feel, 
also, that there we get the initiative of the true 
spirit of education. I feel so strongly that the 
spirit is the essential thing, that I like to mention 
that as the initial ideal to which we should direct 
our attention. 

I visited the other day a kindergarten in the 
midst of one of our primary schools, as it should 
be, and, while attending the exercises, the chil- 
dren and teachers of two lower classes of the pri- 
mary school were invited in to take part in the 
kindergarten games and songs ; and there we had 
a most beautiful mingling of the kindergarten 
with the public school, in spirit and expression. 
I felt that it was like a baptism of the spirit of 

20 



KINDERGARTEN AND MANUAL TRAINING 21 

the kindergarten upon the public-school work. 
There was an ineffable sweetness, and almost holi- 
ness, about the atmosphere of the place. The 
children's faces were lighted up with real in- 
spiration and interest, and one could almost see 
a tongue of flame on the forehead of the teachers. 
I cannot express the spirit that pervaded the 
whole scene. The copy of the Sistine Madonna 
which hung upon the wall seemed its only 
adequate expression. I saw then how easily 
and naturally the spirit of the kindergarten 
could be adopted into the whole method of 
education. 

Prof. Adler spoke of the intellectual power of 
manual training, and its influence on the various 
departments of school-work, and finally of its 
moral power. That has been emphasized in my 
own observation. The effect of industrial work 
in the schools has been regenerative. It acts as 
a tonic upon the moral activities as well as upon 
the intellectual. I should like to give one or two 
instances of its effect as a moral tonic. 

I have a favorite little story which makes this 
quite plain to my own mind. It is the story 
of Tomowski, a little boy who had been sent to 
the reformatory, or truant school, out of a pri- 
mary school. He had been altogether a bad 
boy, as the teachers sometimes say of a boy 
who has followed a very distorted course of devel- 



22 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

opment. He had come back from the truant 
school, and was again at the door of the primary 
school. He was about fourteen. He was well 
known as one of the most troublesome of chil- 
dren, vicious, mischievous, out of school as well 
as in, and so far behind in his intellectual develop- 
ment that he was suspected of being partially 
imbecile, so far as school-work was concerned. 
The teacher, a wise woman, full of sweetness and 
light, said to herself, ''This boy, though not 
advanced enough for my class, would be so great 
a charge for any other teacher, that I will put 
him into my own class." As she led him into 
her room, thoughts flashed quickly into her mind 
in regard to her treatment of him. She made no 
reference to his history. She put a good boy on 
each side of him, and then she called him up and 
asked if he could go out doors and find three very 
nice plantain leaves for her to use. He was 
pleased with the confidence she placed in him, 
and said he thought he could. He returned as 
soon as possible with three fresh, whole plantain 
leaves and handed them to her. She gave them 
to him and the two boys beside him, with paper 
and pencil, telling them to make a picture of the 
leaf, either by drawing or tracing. The children 
went to work with delight. The leaves were 
drawn, and the teacher praised Tomowski. Then 
she gave each a little vial of colored wash and a 



KINDERGARTEN AND MANUAL TRAINING 23 

brush, and asked them to color the leaves and 
make them look as much as possible like the 
plantain leaf. Next, she gave them each a pair 
of scissors, — one of those which a certain super- 
visor had carried to the primary-school teachers, 
and which had been received by many with a 
smile of incredulity, — and said, ''Now cut out 
the leaf that you have drawn." This was soon 
accomplished. She then placed all the leaves on 
a screen, putting the names of those who had 
made them against the copies, which were side by 
side wit-h the real ones, and gave a lesson to the 
class upon the leaves, — a very attractive lesson 
to the children and one in the usual course of 
lessons given there, — after which she went on 
with the regular exercises of the room, in which 
Tomowski showed a very positive and steady 
interest, and which he accomplished in a sat- 
isfactory way. During the whole session she 
had no occasion to be reminded that he was a 
bad boy. 

The next morning she placed him as before, 
and brought out some clay and showed him how to 
make a clay leaf. He took great pains, and mani- 
fested decided aptness for it. The clay leaf also 
was put on exhibition. This little placque may 
be seen here to-day in the manual-training exhibit 
of the Boston primary schools ; and to my eye its 
natural and graceful outlines are the sign-manual 



24 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

of the free spirit of truth, waiting for expression in 
right activities, which may be developed even in 
the most discouraging of our children. In that 
way the teacher proceeded ; giving some form of 
manual training, something which engaged the 
child's active participation at once, which gave 
him self-respect, and an opportunity to measure 
himself as a good boy by other good children, and 
made him feel that he, too, could do something 
worthy of commendation, and be of some use. 
Every Friday this teacher had the habit of invit- 
ing parents and friends to see the boys, and the 
work that had been accomplished during the week ; 
and Tomowski's work was always among the best. 
His name was always placed with his work. It 
stood for his individual reputation, and gave him 
a new consciousness of power and courage to do 
his best. At the end of the year she had not 
had occasion once to correct this boy. He had 
never been late or absent. He was no longer a 
truant, but a clean, respectable boy. He had 
taken hold of his intellectual work with such vigor 
and success, that he had outstripped the whole 
class and was prepared to skip a grade. He felt 
that his past history had been effaced, and that 
he could begin life anew. 

In order to show further the subtle effect of 
manual training upon moral growth, I will relate 
the story of Peter: — 



JClNDEKGARTEiV AND MANUAL TRAINING 25 

Such a pleasant schoolroom and wise and pro- 
gressive teacher ! She is a mother, and knows and 
loves the children ; she is versatile in resource, and 
yet quiet, with great power of firm, undemonstra- 
tive control. She has many of the freshest and 
best devices for teaching by the best methods. 
Everything she does has a meaning and is adapted 
to the wants and development of her class. I take 
her some knives and scissors, saying, " I don't 

know that you want these, Mrs. , you have so 

many things, and do such beautiful work, and keep 
such good order;" but she replies eagerly, " Oh, 
that is just exactly what I want ! I have been try- 
ing to think of something for Peter : you see him 
there by the door, he is asleep. He often comes 
drowsy and stupid and half-intoxicated ; he is filthy 
and profane, and smokes and chews tobacco, and 
may be under-witted ; he does almost nothing. 
Perhaps he would be waked up by a knife to use." 
So I give my tools, and know they will not be neg- 
lected or misused here, and I visit the school 
again in a week. '* How is Peter.-*" — "Why, I 
cannot tell you how he has improved. I let him 
take a knife and wood, and we have begun some 
slojd-work right in the room. We let boys who 
have done their work whittle, and a number of 
things have been made. The boys are delighted 
with it, and are so good and neat about it ! We 
have saved these things they have made, to show 



26 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

you. And who do you think has done the best 
piece of work ? Peter, bring your stick to Mrs. 
Hopkins, who gave us the knives." — "Why, is 
this Peter's .'* How even and smooth it is, and it 
seems to me Peter has made himself look nicer 
too ! " — " Yes ; Peter made such a good stick that 
I set it up for a model, and Peter is so glad to do 
something that is really good, that he has improved 
ever since, and is getting to be a very good boy. 
I think he is not going to drink any more, because 
it makes him so dull." 

The next week I go again. The change in Peter 
is still more striking : he is getting bright, and 
takes an interest in his studies. He has made an 
extremely good spade, which is exhibited with the 
slojd-work of the boys, and is really much the best 
piece of work seen. Peter has learned that he can 
excel in this thing. He has begun to respect 
himself ; he is leaving off his bad habits, and attend- 
ing not only to his conduct, but to his person; 
he looks human and is agreeable. After a few 
weeks I visit the school once more. The slojd 
has developed into a shop with benches and tools, 
and Peter gets his lessons well, that he may be 
allowed to go into the shop at times. He helps 
the other boys there ; he stays after school, and 
comes before school, to get things in order and 
work at the models ; his work is still by far the 
best in the shop. He is a kind of master work- 



KINDERGARTEN AND MANUAL TRAINING 2/ 

man ; his hair is brushed, he is clean, he is neatly 
dressed, with the help of some who care for his 
success, and he is getting to be a good scholar. 
The teacher says he has dropped all his bad 
habits, is trustworthy and steady. When I go out 
of the school with my traps into the rain, he asks 
to go and carry my bag and my umbrella, and 
help me into the car. He is a gentleman. He is 
regenerated by faith in his power to achieve. 

Wherever manual training is introduced, I hope 
it will be recognized that its educational value is as 
great for girls as for boys. We are apt to forget 
how many girls are aching to put their thought 
and feeling into some form of expression. But 
when we remember that a young lady, a recent 
graduate from the Institute of Technology, has 
just been called to Chicago to superintend the 
erection of the buildinsf she desio^ned for the 
department of the women's exhibit in the Colum- 
bia Exposition of 1892, when we think how much 
it is to her, and how much pride we all take in it, 
that she is able to express her own individuality 
and her own ideals in such forms, we must re- 
member to leave the field free to all, girls as well 
as boys. We have too long relegated our girls to 
the cooking-school and the sewing-room as their 
only sphere of manual activity ; but I hope we 
shall wake up to the truth, that girls need the 



28 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

same liberty of selection as boys, so far as the 
expression of their feeling and thought is con- 
cerned. They have great thoughts that long to I 
take shape, and we must leave the field free for | 
all. ^ 



PHYSICAL TRAINING A MEANS OF 
MENTAL AND MORAL TRAINING 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE LADIES' PHYSIOLOGICAL 

INSTITUTE 



There is a fitness in discussing mental and 
moral education from the physiological point of 
view. We have long since learned that physiologi- 
cal conditions to a great extent determine the 
power and degree of mental activity ; we know 
that the sound mind needs a sound body for its 
tool, no less than for its home. The air taken into 
the lungs must be pure, the circulation vigorous, 
the digestion healthy, in order to effectual mental 
activity. The brain must be nourished with good 
blood. We cannot make a hungry child attentive 
to study, nor a tired child think well ; we cannot 
make the child that is ragged and dirty do good 
mental work, or respond to moral stimulus. We 
must have right physiological conditions in our 
schoolrooms : let the sunshine stream in, let plants 
grow and spread their verdure to purify the air, 
let the fresh air be poured in, and the foul air 

29 



30 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

be driven out, that nature may be free to act in 
her bodily and mental connections as well as in 
moral growth and expression. The clothing must 
be easy and the posture natural, so that physical 
freedom shall insure the best activities of all kinds. 
When I go into a schoolroom and see the chil- 
dren listless or stupid, I at once look for the physi- 
cal cause. What are the means of ventilation t 
How does the thermometer stand } Are the seats 
comfortable and adjusted to the need of the pupils.-^ 
Is the air fresh 1 Have they had a chance to work 
off their restlessness by any physical exercise } 
Do they look sufficiently fed and properly clothed } 
If they are sleepy, there is some reason for it : what 
is it ? Not rarely I find that they have had far too 
little sleep. The young teachers, perhaps, do not 
think of all these matters ; and so they blame the 
children who are not doing the work well, and too 
often they think, verily, that they are doing God 
service in inflicting corporal punishment upon the 
poor boys, whose misfortune it is to suffer bodily, 
and endure physical hardship as a life tenure night 
and day. I found a weary teacher struggling with 
a class of very sleepy boys one day in June : she 
was rolling up quite a list to stay after school for 
further study, the most illogical thing she could 
have invented for the correction of their fault. I 
found on inquiry that twelve boys in the room, 
none of them over ten years old, had been out all 



PHYSICAL TRAINING 3 1 

night in the street, and probably had eaten nothing 
but bananas and possibly drunk nothing but beer. 
What could be done for the mental and moral 
training of children in such a condition ? Their 
first necessity was sleep or food. 

It is not easy to solve the problem of right physi- 
ological conditions in our city schools : I almost 
despair of its solution in the districts of foreign 
population. The kindergarten methods give us 
some courage. To see three or four devoted women 
at work like missionaries with the children ; visiting 
their homes, securing proper clothing for them, 
exhorting and encouraging the mothers to keep 
them clean and helping them do it every day, 
feeding the children once during the session and 
serving at each session, by personal charity, a tum- 
bler of fresh, good milk to each poor little one, as 
is done in one, at least, of our kindergartens ; this 
is, indeed, a tonic to the sinking soul of the prophet. 
Perhaps we shall get down to the children in time, 
and carry the gospel of true nurture into the 
schoolroom. 

A child can do nothing morally worthy without 
a basis of self-respect. A good master, who has 
learned how to build up character, has told me many 
of his instructive experiences in his effort to 
reach the moral nature. His name is well known as 
the synonyme of wise benevolence, of just charity, 
of true and complete educative influence ; it is 



32 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

dear to thousands of our graduates for two gener- 
ations ; it stands for the founding of the sewing 
and cooking instruction which has so blessed the 
community and built up homes in comfort and 
health and moral strength. I speak of our most 
venerable master, Mr. Robert Swan, of the Win- 
throp Grammar School for girls, a man whose pres- 
ence is still a benediction amongst us. He told 
me the following story, which I give in substance, 
of his experience in a boys' school, and it contains 
a lesson worth learning. A boy who was an habit- 
ual truant and of vicious tendencies, who made no 
progress in school, and was rough, coarse, and low 
in his tastes, was brought back by the truant-officer 
after a truancy of three weeks. He expected a 
pretty thorough chastisement ; but Mr. Swan, who 
had already lost faith in that method of dealing 
with the truant, took the boy down to the base- 
ment alone, and said, " Now, I don't wonder you 
don't feel like coming to school with that ragged 
and dirty jacket ; take it off, and wash your hands 
and face as well as you can, and I will see if I can 
find you another jacket." He went to a closet 
where he kept some good second-hand clothing, 
which he had solicited for just such exigencies, and 
took out a very nice jacket, which had been given 
him by a father whose son had worn it but little 
when he died. Mr. Swan told the truant to try it 
on : it fitted him perfectly. " Now," said he, ''that 



PHYSICAL TRAINING 33 

jacket belonged to a boy who was a perfect gentle- 
man in his behavior ; he was a good boy in school 
and out, and his father would not want any boy to 
wear that who did not mean to do right. I will 
hang your jacket up here, and you can wear that as 
long as you behave like a gentleman ; when you 
forfeit it, you can have yours back again. Now 
go to your seat and see what kind of a record you 
can make." The boy reformed, and never did 
anything worthy of correction in school ; he woke 
up to his school-work and was rapidly promoted ; 
he wore the jacket until he had outgrown it, and 
he became a good man and useful citizen. The 
foundation of self-respect was laid by the master's 
treatment, and sympathy was established which 
made the master's influence permanently effectual. 
The exercise of well-directed games is good 
physiological preparation for mental and moral 
growth. Athletics, not overdone, are a great outlet 
and safeguard for pent-up energies as well as a 
training in resolution, courage, and self-mastery. 
The English schools avail themselves of this method 
of training the whole boy. Dr. Arnold set the 
forces of natural play at work to build up the 
school and create strong boys and men, with power 
of resistance and self-control. It is the same prin- 
ciple which Froebel incorporated in the kindergar- 
ten. Healthful, joyous, fraternal activity under 
proper limitations is good physiological and peda- 



34 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

gogical doctrine. I think we do not make enough 
account of it in our elementary schools. 

But we are studying the physiological problem 
as an integral and fundamental part of our common- 
school education. We must look a little deeper 
than we have yet done for the essential philosophy 
of physical and intellectual connections and mutual 
relations. We find our deepest thinkers mining 
in this vein, and we must, before long, formulate the 
science of these reactions of mind and body, and of 
the responses which the child makes to his environ- 
ment and conditions. The methods of mental and 
moral activity are so subtle, their processes so com- 
plex, their causes and results so intangible, that it 
is difficult to perceive them nicely, or to determine 
them completely. All the new approaches to edu- 
cational science are along the line of physiological- 
psychology ; and we must begin with the first 
elements of investigation in order to formulate the 
true methods of training the body, mind, and soul 
in uninterrupted concord. 

In the first place we may ask, what is the 
human body.? How various may be our defini- 
tion ! It is the combination of tissues and 
organs which constitutes the human organism ; 
the connection we make with our environment, 
the medium of transmitted thought and will, 
the a2:2:reo:ation of differentiated cells which 
serves the purpose of human existence, a com- 



PHYSICAL TRAINING 35 

munity of organs and processes necessary to the 
preservation and demonstration of human life, 
a machine in which the potential energy of life 
is converted into the kinetic energy of living; it 
is the tool of the mind and soul ; it is the point 
of application of human force to the material uni- 
verse. The body is built up directly or indirectly 
from the earthly matter by which it is surrounded ; 
it is made of dust, continually re-enforced by dust 
more or less transformed, and at last, when the 
indwelling principle of life is withdrawn, it returns 
to the earth as it was, and becomes a constituent 
part of its mass, to be drawn into its uses again in 
other forms of life. 

But is this all t Is it pure matter, even highly 
organized matter, this body of ours } Is not a 
new apprehension of its meaning and essence 
coming into science as well as into religion } 
Surely it is not the succession of particles con- 
stantly coming and going in this organism which 
can be called the body. At what bidding do they 
come and go } By what power are they assimilated 
to differences of structure and function "l according 
to what pattern do they fall into line for the ser- 
vice of the soul, ever presenting its image more 
and more perfectly as dominated by habits of feel- 
ing, thought, and action } to what entity do they 
render homage and obedience while life lasts t 
Ah, there is something more subtle than matter, 



36 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

which must be called the body ; it is the image, 
the pattern, the ideal, which commands, controls, 
and transfigures its material particles to a con- 
stant expression of itself, and which will, in all 
environments of being, forever assimilate to its 
uses the material of those environments ; it is the 
spiritual reality dominating the outward material, 
which is the essential body. Physiology, as well 
as psychology, must recognize this profound truth, 
and nowhere forget the unity of the threefold 
being called man, and the close interrelation of 
body, mind, and soul. 

There was a time, perhaps, when all physiologi- 
cal trainins: and medical treatment dealt with the 
corporeity of the body as the essential subject of 
experiment. A clumsy, crude method it seems, 
now that science has gone a step or two in advance. 
Calomel and blood-letting belong to an age of 
medical superficiality, when the sea-captain, with 
his chest of drugs, or with his butcher's tools, met 
the exigencies of a long voyage for his crew, 
ignorantly if not barbarously, but with the same 
confidence as the quack doctor, if not with almost 
the skill of the country practitioner. Now a dis- 
tempered organ or tissue is not at once treated 
locally with the blister or the knife, but the inves- 
tigation is carried to the blood, or to the secre- 
tions, or to the nervous system, and the cure 
begins nearer the source of the trouble. The 



PHYSICAL TRAINING 37 

physician looks upon the outward condition only in 
its symptomatic significance, and seeks the inward 
cause for his point of application. Perhaps the age 
is dawning when physiological science may with 
psychological discernment attack a still deeper 
cause, a more intricate relationship of this wonder- 
ful organism we call the body, and learn how to 
reach the connections of body, mind, and soul by 
curative agencies. In fact, the time has come 
when the physician must be able to explore every 
seat of man's activities, if he would be able to dis- 
cover and correct what appears to be a fault or 
disorder in any one ; the study of a muscle 
involves the study of nervous centres and connec- 
tions, the study of nervous power involves the 
study of mind and feeling and all their articula- 
tions with the varied organism of the body. 

If, then, the comprehension of bodily activities 
demands such knowledge of mental and moral 
associations, no less does a comprehension of men- 
tal and moral activities involve a knowledge of 
their physiological associations. The educator 
must study the reactions of the bodily conditions, if 
he would understand mental and moral conditions ; 
he must apply corrective agencies to physiological 
disturbance or torpidity, if he would take the 
first steps toward correcting that of the mind and 
soul. The teacher must look at the body as symp- 
tomatic of the mind ; he must often stop in his 



38 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

direct efforts to train the mind, in order to set the 
body and mind in tune, in order to reach the best 
physiological conditions for the unfettered move- 
ment of mind, for the free development of soul. 
We are just beginning to learn this lesson, and are 
suddenly bringing our educational efforts to bear 
upon the whole physical organism. We have dis- 
covered that the body is occupied by the fnind 
wherever the nervous system is revealed by nerve 
tissue and by muscular action. We are outgrowing 
the notion of locating the intelligence and the 
moral sense ; we are studying the doctrine of the 
unity of the threefold nature of the child ; we see 
that complete nervous action and automatic mus- 
cular communication express intelligence in every 
part of the body, in hand or foot as well as in 
spinal-cord or brain. The whole body is per- 
meated by mind and will, and the training of any 
part of the child means the training of the whole 
child ; the development of any organ in its right 
relations is the development to that extent of the 
mind and soul. The training and harmonious 
mastery of the body evolves soul-power, because 
the soul presides over every organ and inspires 
every activity. " Know ye not that ye are the 
temple of God and that the spirit of God dwelleth 
in you.'*" Religion found it out for us first, and 
now let science hasten to meet the great truth. 
There is a broad philosophy here ; do we yet fully 



PHYSICAL TRAINING 39 

grasp it ? It is for you as physiologists, as phy- 
sicians ; it is for me as psychologist, as teacher ; 
we must never lose sight of it in our efforts to 
reach either the mind or the body. 

Some years ago I was staying at Dr. Taylor's 
Swedish movement-cure in New York. Day 
after day I saw a little boy of four years, supposed 
to be paralyzed, but evidently of very low mental 
power, brought in by his father, mother, and grand- 
mother, all absorbed in the hope of his improve- 
ment, to take some of the various muscular exer- 
cises or manipulations. The child manifested 
very little intelligence : he was so dependent, how- 
ever, on expressions of human sympathy, that he 
missed painfully the absence of any one of the 
three who accompanied him, and even turned 
for a responsive smile to a stranger, and seemed 
disturbed if it were not given. I watched the 
artificial movements by which he was treated, with 
complete incredulity at that time. I said, "The 
physician is powerless to create intelligence." 
But can we now doubt that a mind so inert can 
be aroused only through physical applications and 
through sympathy which — thank Heaven ! — holds 
us together to the last, and is the most tenacious, 
as well as the most blessed link in the chain 
which binds us to the universal Love. But the 
intelligence so limited in its power as to make no 
impression even upon the lowest voluntary mus- 



40 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

cles can be gradually approached through aroused 
bodily sensations, and, by regular exercise, a habit 
of physical perception be created which proves 
reactionary upon the mental power ; also a mere 
bodily sympathy, made more or less constant and 
close, will at last beget a mental responsiveness, 
which seems to be the only avenue to the im- 
prisoned intelligence, and the mind is found to 
grow and express itself in more and more conscious 
activities by the commerce of these habitual re- 
actions. Let us carry the analogy still farther, 
and find in the higher departments of physical 
training the means of moral training, in the es- 
tablishment of harmonious bodily processes the 
beginnings of harmonious moral processes, the 
spirit of the Lord coming to dwell in the renewed 
temple of the body. 

We may begin at either end of the linkage, 
wherever the chain is strongest and the attach- 
ment most accessible. In the days of the New 
England Primer, the teacher attacked the moral 
nature only through the catechism, the decalogue, 
and bodily penalties ; in these days we must attack 
it where we find it, by habits of conduct, by men- 
tal discipline, by physical training, by as high 
ideals as the child is able to assimilate, for it is 
these only which will be worked into character. 
The personal atmosphere about the child ; the real 
nurture of the child through sympathy ; the insen- 



PHYSICAL TRAINING 4 1 

sible growing into the image set before him (in 
life, in literature, in the secret chambers of his 
imagery) ; the determining power of habit ; the 
organic tendency of conduct ; the formative agen- 
cies of taste, of self-respect, of ambitions, of self- 
love within right limits, of emulation, of competi- 
tion, of loyalty to social ties, the atmosphere of 
kindly joy, of fraternal intercourse, of play gov- 
erned by good feeling, of happy and useful occu- 
pation ; — all of these are legitimate means of 
reaching and training the moral nature, and not 
one should be regarded as unworthy. 

But when, as I can sadly testify, not one of 
these avenues lies open to many poor little wrecks 
in our public-school population, and the teacher 
beleaguers their moral nature in vain with the 
heavy artillery of moral law and moral penalties, 
or, I might say, immoral penalties, for moral delin- 
quencies ; when the pathetic little boy, ragged, dirty, 
and stupid, is sent to the corner with the cruel 
anathema of " bad boy " day after day, or calloused 
with the rattan for not liking to come where he is 
greeted with its sting ; when the pharisaic teacher 
assumes the right to mete out retributive justice, 
and deal out his " deserts " to the child who has 
never had a chance to feel the sympathy in which 
alone the moral instinct can bud and bloom, who 
has not, even at school, felt the invigorating power 
of respect for his capacity or his achievement, or 



42 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

even for his personality ; when he is shut out from 
all that the moral nature can grow by directly, 
then start afresh from the side of his physical 
needs and capabilities : feed him, clothe him, wash 
him, and teach him to hold up his head, to exer- 
cise his limbs, to control his posture, to train his 
hands in some useful work, to use a few simple 
tools, to believe in himself as an agent to will and 
to do, endowed with organs for his own uses, for 
his own achievement, for helping others, for 
acquiring skill, for creating something, for stand- 
ing up by the side of his fellows, not in humiliation, 
but in brotherhood. Start in with the develop- 
ment of his muscles, with provision for his bodily 
nourishment ; make him warm enough, clean 
enough, and decently clothed ; give him work to do 
and some natural tangible result which he values 
from its well-doing ; especially put him in the way of 
being a help to some one who can appreciate his 
efforts and keep up his faith and courage, and you 
have laid the foundation of a moral growth, and 
cleared the space between him and good character, 
so that he can see and aim for the goal. 

There is no longer a doubt that the whole logic 
of moral and mental training, through physical 
training, will hold in psychology, in physiology, 
in ethics, and in essential religious develop- 
ment. 

Heretofore we have not only been accustomed 



PHYSICAL TRAIXING 43 

to confine the intelligence to the brain, but we 
have regarded the moral nature as something quite 
cut off from the body and the mind. Now we are 
learning the inseparableness of mind and matter, 
of soul and body. We no longer think of the soul 
as dwelling in some inaccessible organ or hidden 
gland, but we recognize its expression in every 
activity, and we try to reach it through every 
avenue. One thing is certain, we shall never be 
able to reach it through atrophied organs or dead 
tissues. We must wake up the whole organism, 
that the mind and the soul may be developed sym- 
metrically and expressed freely. 

When we are starting on a new outlook of 
study, we have to begin with simple steps and 
go slowly. In this new march toward the citadel 
of mind-science, we must take for our subjects of 
study the least complicated problems and make 
the most gradual advances. We may take for our 
study of mind, a case where mind has as yet made 
no distinct expression of itself, where the body 
attends only to its involuntary activities, where no 
sign of personality is yet betrayed. What kind 
of training will be necessary or available to catch 
the first gleam of intelligence lying inert within } 
Bodily movements, physical excitations, are not 
only the only means possible, but the simplest 
and most fundamental points of attack upon the 
passive mind. Rub the apparently idiotic child 



44 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

gently, roll it easily at times, give it such exercise 
as it is capable of responding to, move its limbs 
as nearly in accordance with the natural and vol- 
untary movements of a normal human develop- 
ment as practicable, administer this stimulus at 
regular intervals, and gradually a habit of desire for 
such stimulus arises ; with the desire responded to, 
comes some manifestation of that desire, the incip- 
ient expression of the will, the germ of intelligent 
and voluntary action. Study the case of Sylvanus, 
described so minutely and scientifically, yet so 
simply, by James B. Richards, and recapitulated 
fey Dr. Wey at Mrs. Hemen way's Physical Train- 
ing Conference. 

Froebel has had perfect faith in the interrela- 
tion and harmonious training of the child. It is 
one of his characteristic doctrines. On whichever 
side you apply this great principle of child-culture, 
it will come out victorious ; if the moral nature 
has been stunted, all the organs of nourishment 
or of effort dwarfed by an inherited deterioration 
of brain or moral power, then we must operate 
constructively and from the side least affected 
by circumstance or habit : we must study those 
laws which may be as clearly observed in the 
natural or material processes as in the mental 
and spiritual ; those laws which are revealed 
most plainly by material processes, but which are 
universal in all grades of activity ; those eternal 



PHYSICAL TRAINING 45 

laws which are presented for our discovery in the 
material universe, until we may be strong enough 
to perceive them in the spiritual; — by these we 
may work out the evolution of the moral nature 
and change the brute to a man. 

An eminent authority says, *' Bodily exercise 
constitutes so considerable and necessary an ele- 
ment in all human training, that physical training 
is entitled to be recognized and provided for as an 
integral and indispensable factor in the education 
of children." "Muscular exercise, when properly 
chosen, regulated, and guided, may make a boy into 
a better man than his father was, and enable him 
to transmit to his progeny a veritable aptitude for 
better thoughts and actions." ''Physical training 
has long been recognized as an indispensable 
means for awakening and developing mental 
faculty in idiots, and has been employed with 
astonishing success in the training of criminal 
dullards." 

Not only general physical training, but special 
training of the hand, of the eye, of all the sense- 
powers, will make for this training of the mental 
and moral nature. A very dull child who does 
nothing with books, who is idle, mischievous, and 
untrustworthy, will become at once interested in 
some useful industry, and through that stimulus 
will feel through all his fibres a new impulse for 
doing, until he not only accomplishes good work 



46 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

in the new direction, but takes up his old tasks 
with fresh energy, grows interested in his books, 
and makes strides toward victory, both mentally 
and morally. Tim was an example of this whole- 
some infection ; from being the nuisance of the 
schoolroom, the despair of his teacher, the disgrace 
of his mother, he turned to a chance in the cooking- 
class, and was made over by his delighted interest 
in working there ; he not only scoured the boiler 
and polished the stove with eager hands, but he 
cleaned himself, learned to cook, kept at work, 
brightened up and changed in his whole aspect as 
a boy and as a student, and by the close of the 
term did all his mother's cooking and housework 
while she went out washing, studied his lessons 
quite creditably in school and at home, corrected 
his vicious habits, and was promoted at the end of 
the year, a respectable, useful boy and promising 
pupil, as well as a good son. So close is the link- 
age of nerve and muscle, of brain-power and head- 
power, of character and activity. 

The nervous effect of a vivid mental image is 
well known, but few appreciate how intense it 
often is in the experience of the child ; and when 
the nervous effect is in thorough operation how 
close its connection with the bodily sensations, 
tissues, and functions. The child may be easily 
thrown into a panic by a frightful imagination or 
a strong picture of distress ; he may be made ill 



PHYSICAL TRAINING 47 

by its continuance in his mind ; a vivid impression 
of disease haunts him, until the imprint settles 
into his physical organism and creates a tendency 
to that disease. It is on this account that I can- 
not approve some of our methods of temperance 
instruction ; and, although their lofty purpose se- 
cures my respect, I cannot avoid the conclusion 
that the manner of their inculcation is unpsycho- 
logical as well as unphysiological, and may bring 
about the very conditions they hold up to the 
child's abhorrence. Much of our study of ele- 
mentary science is open to the same objection, 
and is certainly not suited to young children, 
whose tissues are so impressionable, and whose 
sympathetic imagination is so quick and responsive. 
There are suggestions which come from my 
own experience of some influences to be recog- 
nized in the treatment of the child in the school, 
and in the relations of the teacher to him, which 
lead us into, perhaps, too abstruse a philosophy 
and too vague a region of thought. The thought- 
ful teacher will experiment beyond his dogma, 
and to-day we are bound to pursue laboratory 
methods in education. My friend Mr. Swan, 
already quoted, has supported many of my own 
gleams of psychological discovery by testimony as 
to his own. He says that when his class is dull, 
he is often able to brighten it by reseating the 
pupils. There seem to be centres of power and 



48 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

centres of apathy in the room ; he scatters those 
centres, putting a bright, earnest girl in the midst 
of a stupid group, and she becomes a nucleus of 
light and activity ; the dull girls around her wake 
up, the mental atmosphere of the room is stirred 
by waves of refreshment, the moral power of the 
class is lifted and strengthened, and the work of 
the room moves forward. It is like the position 
of each brain-cell in the reticulated nerve-tissue 
of the brain ; magnetic lines are formed, and 
unseen currents are started from one brain-cell to 
another, until the whole brain is a living mesh of 
stimulative agencies. How rich a reservoir of 
physiological and psychological truth is indicated 
by such suggestions of experience as these, and 
how much has educational science to learn about 
these subtle modes of communication of energy or 
contagion of apathy ! 

But I turn away from the alluring fields of 
speculative philosophy in this direction, to hold 
myself to the educational certainties of the theme. 
I await the swift demonstrations of science for 
your profession and mine, and prophesy immense 
educational and physiological advance for us all 
within the coming twenty-five years ; for we are 
getting hold of the great linkage of truth, and 
learning to feel for the thread in the labyrinth of 
nature ; we are recognizing the natural laws as the 
same in all grades of being, the natural processes 



PHYSICAL TRAINING 49 

of growth as represented by what we can see and 
handle in the laboratory of this life, so that the 
invisible things of God are by them clearly seen ; 
we have our pattern, and we can work to scale in 
the training of immortal souls, as well as in the pre- 
servation and healing of our mortal bodies and the 
successful companionship of the two until they 
part, to meet, perchance, in some happier clime in 
closer harmony and larger freedom. 



THE MORAL PROBLEM IN THE 
PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



OPENING OF DISCUSSION BEFORE THE NEW 
ENGLAND WOMEN'S CLUB. 



A FEW fundamental principles which modern 
psychology has reached, will put us in a reason- 
able attitude toward this discussion. We have 
learned something of the interrelation of body, 
mind, and soul. We are beginning to perceive 
that the moral nature is governed by the same 
laws as the physical and intellectual natures. 

It has been thought that the schools are dis- 
tinctively for the training of the mind. The soul 
must not be included in the consideration of the 
child's progress while in school. People nowa- 
days seem to be afraid to speak of the soul in con- 
nection with the child's education. "We do not 
know that there is any such thing," say the agnos- 
tics. " We know about it, but it is the business 
of the churches to train it," say the bigots. "• The 
least said about it, the better," say the tax-payers. 
'' We have nothing to do with it, train the body, 

50 



THE MORAL PROBLEM 51 

teach the mind," say the advocates of secular edu- 
cation. " We do not know whether there be any 
Holy Ghost," say the materialists of all ages. 

I go into the schools and try to analyze the 
child-nature. Can I separate and disconnect 
body, mind, and soul in order to meet the demand 
of the day for purely secular education } I might 
as well undertake to dissect living bodies. My 
attitude toward the child is such that I cannot 
deal with him piece-meal. He is a threefold 
unity to me ; if I shut my eyes to his soul, I can- 
not see the child at all. His body is not himself, 
his mind is not all of himself ; where is his love, 
his joy, his desire, his responsive self .f^ Do you 
say I must not recognize these, his soul-functions, 
in his training and development in the school t 
You give me a puzzle I cannot solve. The very 
first thing I see in the child is sympathy, and that 
is the first thing I offer him. I take my own soul 
with me to school, I could not go to the child 
without it : in the contact of my soul with the 
soul of the child lies all my hope of helping even 
his mental development. Love is our atmos- 
phere, our condition of activity ; banish it and you 
are in the dullest, coldest, and most barren of 
schoolrooms, where all that is taught is a blot 
and a drudgery. You agree that at this stage of 
the science of education, we cannot take less than 
"the whole child" into our scheme of public- 



52 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

school work. It is necessary that we involve the 
body and soul as well as the mind in our efforts to 
evolve human growth and power. It is just as 
great a mistake to try to train the mind as dis- 
tinct from the soul, as to try to appeal to the soul 
without involving the mind-functions. We must 
give the child a chance to exercise all his powers, 
and draw upon all his relationships wherever 
we attempt to educate him, whether at home, at 
school, or in the church ; we must work in the 
line of his associated activities. If the ecclesias- 
tics ask me to leave out the soul in the training of 
the mind, I ask them to leave out the mind in the 
training of the soul ; one is as great an impossi- 
bility as the other. The psychologist under- 
stands that the whole nature is involved in every 
vital exercise of any part of it. The thorough 
arousing of any healthful activity involves moral 
activity. This principle may serve us in our 
efforts to reach character. 

A direct attack on the ethical sense is not 
always the best way to correct moral short-com- 
incf. Maxims will not affect the feelins^s or the 
will. Outward conduct is the expression of in- 
ward conditions ; we must treat conduct symptom- 
atically. If a child is restless, give him some- 
thing to do which he will like to do. If a child has 
no moral ambition, plant self-respect as a ladder 
by which he can climb to it ; do not complete his 



THE MORAL PROBLEM 53 

degradation by a degrading punishment. Handle 
the child's moral nature as if it were that of a 
child, and not of a man ; treat it constructively ; 
build it from the foundation ; attack it where 
you find it : there is always same open way ; do 
not knock at a closed door. Avoid the mistake 
of reo^ardins: the moral conduct of children as 
wholly external, and, so far as school is concerned, 
to be treated wholly as a matter of external dis- 
cipline. Peter is inattentive, perhaps mischievous, 
pinches his neighbor, tears his book ; the adjust- 
ment is simple. Peter goes into the corner with 
his back to the school ; if he is on the teacher's 
list of " bad boys," he gets a rattaning, after 
which he is sullenly or timorously quiet and 
stupid. Many a teacher is satisfied with this 
sequence, and regards it as a settlement of her 
moral account with Peter. It may have to be 
repeated until it becomes a regular habit of deal- 
ing, and Peter regards it as his programme of 
school-work. 

But what has it to do with Peter's moral nature } 
Nothing whatever ; that is as dormant as it was at 
the outset. It may be assumed that the school 
has nothing to do with Peter's moral nature, 
that it has simply to protect itself, and secure the 
rights of the attentive and well-behaved pupils. 
There is a show of reason in that assumption. 

But if we assume that Peter goes to school to 



54 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

receive the right stimulus and development of his 
whole nature, and chiefly of his moral nature as 
being the inclusive and determining element in 
his career as a human being, what has such a 
purely external mode of treatment done toward 
meeting the demand? Nothing: on the contrary, 
it has degraded and dwarfed the development, not 
only of the moral nature, but inclusively of the 
intellectual nature also. The teacher has not 
touched her first responsibility for the poor boy ; 
she has taken upon herself the office of judging 
him, rather than that of helping him ; she has 
labelled him " bad," and, perhaps, undertaken to 
deal out retributive justice to him, neither of 
which she has the least shadow of right to do ; in 
fact, she shows herself shallow or pharisaic to 
think of it as a right, much less a duty. 

Suppose Peter has done something really bad ; 
is he therefore a "bad boy".-* Suppose he repents 
even before his punishment is inflicted, and means 
to do better ; who then has a right to punish him t 
The teacher says, " I told Peter I should punish 
him : he knows he deserved it ; and I must punish 
him because he deserved it, and for the good of 
the school as an example and warning." What a 
monstrous attitude for a man or woman to take 
toward a little child ! 

What is the only legitimate object of punish- 
ment.-* certainly reformation. When a teacher 



THE MORAL PROBLEM 55 

considers it necessary to punish after confession 
and repentance, he outruns the limit of his au- 
thority and responsibihty, and does what no mor- 
tal has a right to do. His business is with the 
needs, not the deserts, of the child. The teacher 
has no endowed privilege of adjusting or compen- 
sating or avenging the wrong. "■ Vengeance is 
mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." Even the 
civil power no longer assumes a retributive right ; 
that day is gone by for the State. The criminal 
is punished only for his own reformation and the 
protection of society as a deterrent from crime. 
In a family or school, the social factor may be an 
element in determining the necessity of punish- 
ment. The school must not be too much inter- 
rupted by the behavior of a few pupils. The in- 
telligent child understands that, and appreciates 
the duty of the teacher to protect the good pupils 
and prevent the bad pupils from defrauding both 
themselves and others of privileges which they 
have a right to enjoy. 

This principle of moral administration seerns 
hardly to have been recognized in our Boston 
schools. Corporal punishment appears to be the 
most frequent method of dealing with the moral 
delinquent. 

Even in the primary schools, faith in love and 
justice seems to be in a state of apathy, and fear 
is the common appeal. A reform in this direction 



56 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

was attempted some years ago, but failed of sup- 
port, and the subject remained dormant for a long 
time. 

In the winter of 1889, after brooding over this 
sad condition of the moral problem in our schools 
more and more, I felt constrained to express 
myself in the matter, and addressed a semi-official 
letter to each of the grammar masters as follows : — 

Mason Street, Feb. 6, 1889. 

My dear Sir, — One of the most unexpected features of the 
Boston school-system to visitors from abroad is its arbitrary and 
mechanical method of punishment. The rattan, on the desk of 
the master or in the hands of every assistant, is a genuine sur- 
prise to a stranger. 

I feel humiliated, as a representative of the Boston schools, 
that they have not yet outgrown such a method of discipline. I 
have found the subject a very discouraging one in any plan of 
moral development for our children. If they are dealt with by 
brutish methods, we may well despair of evolving character. 
Certainly the schools ought to be reformatory rather than penal 
for degraded or insubordinate pupils. The more I investigate the 
extent of corporal punishment in our grammar and primary 
schools, the more I am overwhelmed with its apparently excessive 
use, both for frequency and severity, and for trivial misdemeanors. 
Within a few months several cases of very culpable abuse of its 
administration have come to my notice. I am quite sure that the 
monthly reports of the masters give no adequate representation of 
the amount and degree of this punishment, because these reports 
depend upon reports by the several teachers in the various depart, 
ments, and such sub-reports are open to very grave suspicion of 
inaccuracy, in some cases are known to be partial. 

I have frequently conferred wnth masters on this subject, and 
in almost every case they tell me that such punishments are 
inflicted by their assistants only, or if by themselves, for offences 



THE MORAL PROBLEM 57 

reported by their assistants, — very rarely for insubordination 
under their own eyes. I believe that our grammar masters are 
qualified to correct faults of school conduct in a more dignified 
way and by more ennobling means. The rattan is not more 
degrading and hardening to the pupil than to the teacher; and 
other handling of the pupil for punishment is equally so. A man 
or woman is lowered in the human scale by striking or personally 
assaulting a child. If a teacher does not feel himself possessed 
of enough sympathy and moral power to govern radically, and 
develop character by personal example and appeal, or if he has 
not resources enough in his methods of training to secure good 
conduct from his pupils, he is not suited to his work, or else he 
has too great distrust of himself, which I think is usually the case. 
Several masters have told me that they would engage to do with- 
out corporal punishment if they could select their own assistants 
from the primary classes up. 

I hope that those who feel ready to undertake purely moral 
methods of discipline under favorable circumstances, will at once 
initiate a course of action to bring about such circumstances. I 
believe that a general adoption of manual training would make 
much of the punishment unnecessary, inasmuch as a great deal of 
school disorder arises merely from want of occupation and from 
idle mischief ; and the ability and opportunity to produce something 
would stimulate self-respect, which is the first step toward reform. 
I have sometimes thought that an ungraded class in every building 
would be a moral safety-valve, and, if put under teachers of 
exceptional power and wisdom as well as sympathy, might become 
a probationary and reformatory place of relief for the school ; or, 
there might be a sort of half-way school in a few localities, where 
a boy should be put on probation before being sent either back to 
his own class or to the truant school. 

At least I am quite sure that only the master of a school 
should administer corporal punishment, and then not in the pres- 
ence of the class, nor except in the presence of some other authorized 
person, such as the Chairman of the District Committee, the 
Superintendent or the Supervisor of the school, that there may be 
some unprejudiced and competent witness to the act. 



58 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

I think public sentiment will before long demand the abolition 
of corporal punishment in the schools. If all the cases of its 
abuse were spread before the public, that day would already have 
arrived. We cannot hope to stem the current of popular impa- 
tience with such methods and such barbarities as might be brought 
to light. Will it not be wise for the masters themselves to pro- 
pose and carry out as soon as possible some scheme looking 
toward the abatement, if not the abolition, of any mechanical 
means of correction of school conduct, so as to save themselves 
from a compulsory abolition which must ensue before very long ? 
I would like to refer the masters to the accompanying School 
Document, in which the subject of corporal punishment is ably 
and exhaustively treated. 

I beg those whom I address to excuse the urgency of my 
appeal, on the ground of my deep abhorrence of such unphilosoph- 
ical methods of moral government, and of my frequent and dis- 
trusting knowledge of their use and abuse, as well as on account of 
my earnest sympathy with both teachers and pupils, my love of 
children, and my faith in the moral power and high motive of the 
grammar masters as individuals and as a body. I am convinced 
that a reform once undertaken, the way will become easier than is 
apprehended, and the rattan will be laid on the shelf forever, as 
far beyond resuscitation in our grammar and primary schools as 
it has proved to be in our high schools and in the classes of girls 
everywhere. 

Very respectfully, 

Louisa P. Hopkins. 

It will be noticed that two resources are sug- 
gested as a substitute for corporal punishment, both 
of which are now fairly in operation. Manual 
training has proved itself very effectual as a moral 
tonic; the " probationary " or ''parental" school 
is taking definite shape, and is about being inaugu- 
rated as a part of our school-system. Mr. S. B. 



THE MORAL PROBLEM 59 

Capen has urged and fostered the undertaking, and 
Superintendent Seaver has contributed to its 
success a most important and enlightening docu- 
ment on reformatory m<=^thods ; this, with the Su- 
perintendent's Annual Report, issued soon after 
the above letter was distributed to the masters, 
has placed Mr. Seaver clearly against arbitrary 
methods of dealing with the moral problem, and in 
the front rank of progressive moral educators. The 
School Committee made an elaborate report on the 
subject of Corporal Punishment, in response to 
the Annual Report of the Superintendent, which 
called the attention of the country to it, protected 
the teachers from the censure which had assailed, 
them, and claimed for them the prerogative of 
administering corporal punishment as before ; it 
is, therefore, still a blot upon the Boston school- 
system ; but the world moves, and we believe 
the schools must advance and arrive at the abol- 
ishment of such false methods before long. A 
better comprehension of the laws and activities of 
the moral nature, a clearer understanding of its 
relations and close connection with the mental and 
bodily activities, and the application of sympathy, 
tact, and common-sense to individual cases of 
wrong-doing, will do much toward the clearing up 
of difficulties and the right solution of the moral 
problem in our schools. 



EDUCATION OF THE SOUL 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE MORAL EDUCATION 
ASSOCIATION 



The soul is fed and nourished by ideals, and 
grows by exercise of its functions, just as the body 
grows, fed by what it can assimilate of its environ- 
ment and built up in every part of its structure by 
exercise of its functions ; just as the mind is fed 
by ideas received through the senses, assimilated 
into the mental organism by processes of thought, 
and growing by exercise of the functions of percep- 
tion, memory, imagination, judgment, and aesthetic 
taste. This is the law of growth for body, mind, 
and soul. 

What are these ideals which nourish the soul, 
and how are they received t truth, love, justice, 
order, beauty, harmony, purity, and all that makes 
for righteousness, — these are our soul-environ- 
ment ; they can be perceived by the child, and by all 
conscious personalities ; they can be assimilated by 
love and desire, and enter into the heart to build up 
character, which is the organic result of soul-growth. 

60 



EDUCATION OF THE SOUL 6 1 

Right habits of thought, feeling, and will, right ac- 
tions and life, furnish the exercise of soul-functions 
which we must arouse in the child, that the objects 
of such exercise may enter into his spiritual struc- 
ture and evolve nobility of character ; and with 
this growth of right habit comes the perception of 
of ideals. " He that doeth the will, shall know of 
the doctrine." 

How are we to present these ideals on which 
the soul of the child is to feed } how can he assim- 
ilate such elements of nourishment } I think the 
first presentation which reaches the child's percep- 
tion, either consciously or unconsciously, is the em- 
bodiment of these ideals in the life of those whom 
he loves ; for the child gets comparatively little, 
except through the medium of personality, and in 
order to draw near to that personality so as to 
imbibe its spirit, he must love it and be in sym- 
pathy with it. The mother, the father, the teacher, 
must show him, by constant manifestation in life, 
what truth, purity, justice, order, and love are, 
essentially ; after a while he associates a certain 
reality with these ideals ; he transfers his conception 
of them to a Being whose existence he will conceive 
for himself if it is not postulated for him. As soon 
as he gains the concept of a Creator, an All-Father, 
a Universal Spirit, he will be able to grow steadily, 
because his ideal can never disappoint him. The 
knowledge of God is the first distinct step in the 



62 THE SPIRIT OF THE JVEIV EDUCATION 

growth of the soul. The fear (or apprehension) of 
God is the beginning of (divine) wisdom. A cen- 
tral or organizing concept is established, around 
which all subordinate ideals may gather. I would 
not attempt to train the spiritual sense, or develop 
spiritual life, without this initiatory step of belief in 
a God of love and power. The moral sense, the 
recognition of moral right and the obligation to 
righteousness, will never be aroused by the appeal 
to a mere abstraction. The concrete good must 
be a subject of faith ; God must be named to the 
child, and enter into relations with him as the 
verity which he must build upon. Nothing is 
more natural to the child than this sense of God 
as a real presence- ; he lives in the light of this 
conscious relationship, and, if not denied, will 
desire it more than all other sources of comfort and 
happiness. God is seeking him, and he is seeking 
God, by every avenue of beauty and love which is 
open to him, either in the friends who surround 
him, the thoughts communicated to him, or the 
works of nature in which he at once recognizes 
the Creator's love and thought. 

I held a flower in my hand as I stood before a 
class of neglected children. All eyes were fixed 
upon it, they love flowers so, these poor little 
ones ! " I like to hold this lovely flower in my 
hand," I said. "Why do you think I like it } what 
does it make me think of } " — " It makes you think 



EDUCATION OF THE SOUL 63 

of God," said a boy with simple gravity. "Yes, it 
almost seems as if God held my hand as I hold 
this flower which He has made ; it is beautiful. 
You may hold it for a moment and see what God 
thought ; how perfect it is ! what a color it has ! 
how sweet a perfume ! " So we should connect 
with the ideal of God, the ideas of symmetry, 
beauty, color, and all that gives us delight in 
nature ; we should connect with it, also, the cease- 
less activity of creative love and force, for creation 
is quite plain to the child as a thing of the present 
and not of the past ; he sees the grass growing 
beneath his feet, he sees the bare stems breaking 
into leaf, the bud opening into flower, and the 
seed ripening into fruit ; this endless cycle of 
growth and renewal is to his ingenuous mind a 
revelation of an ever-present God. The creatures 
all speak to him of the God who made them ; 
the baby came from God into the earthly home, 
and dies but to return like a lamb to the fold. 
The sunset, the stars, the clouds, the gathering 
snow, and the falling rain all go and come at 
God's bidding ; and why should we not join the 
child in ascribing all these phenomena of nature 
directly to Him who is the origin and end of 
creation } We need not confuse the child with 
secondary causes ; if we see steps in the process 
of evolution, they speak only of God's way of 
working, not of some other creative agency. The 



64 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

terrible fact is, that we have grown away from 
this implicit trust in the Power that guides the 
atom and the star, and we are trying to draw 
the child away with us and perplex him as well as 
ourselves. 

Contact with nature, then, leads the child into 
communion with God, and a vital appreciation of 
those ideals which he gradually attaches to that 
personality. I say personality, because I am con- 
vinced by a study of inward experience, as well as 
outward history, that nothing less than personality 
will make a magnetic centre for these exalted 
ideals, or even for common moral discrimination 
and faith in the • requirements of a moral law. 
Look at the history of the French Revolution as 
an example of the loss of conscience under the 
denial of a personal Deity. Even Robespierre | 

found it absolutely necessary to the recovery of I 

reason and order and the stay of anarchy, that ■ 

the name of the Supreme Being should be resus- 
citated for the French people ; he retired to the 
forest to consider what should be able to save the 
conscience and moral sense of the republic, and 
he could imagine no remedy more powerful than 
the Name which is above every name. By it he 
recalled the sanity of the populace, reconstructed 
the state, and the deluge of blood was checked. 
We must accept this as a condition of human 
growth and order, that we should bow with rev- 



EDUCATION OF THE SOUL 65 

erence and love, before a personality which deigns 
to hold converse with the little child and all 
who become as little children, and carry them 
safely forward. As the mind and soul develop, 
they lay hold of ideals with a firmer grasp ; how 
rapidly ideals of vice take possession of and cor- 
rupt the mind ! Reading and the company we 
keep are continually building up or destroying our 
ideals. Literature and art, society and organiza- 
tions, strengthen and define our ideals. The 
poets, the prophets, the observers of nature, or 
those who interpret for us its symbolism and em- 
phasize its beauty, are moulding us more and more 
into images of the ideals they offer for our assimila- 
tion ; all our experience and study contribute, day 
by day, to the clearness and fulness of the ideals 
of life. Ideality is more and more developed, and 
the soul grows in its power to form and assimi- 
late these germinating forces, till they become a 
spring of energy, and a fountain of moral and 
spiritual life. And just as exercise of the physical 
organism constantly increases its power of growth, 
so exercise of the mental and moral powers con- 
stantly increases their power of selecting and 
assimilating their proper nourishment ; by practice 
in acting in conformity to those ideals which are 
the soul's nourishment, we gain in power of ap- 
prehension and assimilation. Right feeling and 
right action make us capable of right understand- 



66 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

ing. This law is very necessary to the training of 
the child as well as of the man. If we form a 
habit of loving, we learn more and more what 
love is in its essence ; we understand more of its 
inherent activities, and exalt our ideal of love until 
it approximates the highest. If we form a habit 
of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, we 
become incapable of apprehending or assimilating 
the ideal of love, and so we go backward and 
downward, we become selfish and brutish, and for- 
feit the promise .of soul-growth, '' Whatsoever 
things are lovely, think on these things." 

Growth by exercise is from stage to stage : 
first the blade, then the ear, after that the full 
corn in the ear; it involves loss by disuse ; 
the cave educates the fish in its waters to 
be blind ; the child who is always receiving 
cannot be generous, we are educating him to be 
selfish by constantly giving to him ; he must give 
in order to become generous. Doing nothing 
educates the child to laziness ; keep the lazy boy at 
work under some inspiration, practise him in 
doing, practise the cross child in smiling and 
singing and playing, the selfish child in helping, 
the proud child in serving, the thoughtless and 
careless child in responsibility for himself and 
others. Function and structure act and re-act on 
each other. Be guided by this great law in all 
you do for the child. Exercise the candidate for 



EDUCATION OF THE SOUL 6/ 

citizenship in fraternal helpfulness, in all the 
economic virtues, in right methods of work. 
Habit is accelerative : sow the wind and reap the 
whirlwind. The boy who forgets to do a duty- 
to-day will forget other duties and be less sorry 
to-morrow. At every remove we get farther for- 
ward or farther away. He who begins to loose him- 
self from the ties which bind him to virtue is like 
one who loosens the cord which holds him to his 
party and his guide on the perilous ascent of the 
Matterhorn ; he slips and with terrible velocity 
falls into the dreadful chasm. 

Our intellectual habits also affect our ideals ; 
careless and blurred perceptions, imperfect and ill- 
defined memory, dull and fitful imagination, unde- 
veloped taste, all these deform and dwarf our moral 
ideals. The communion of the soul with all that 
is spiritual is prevented by mental inactivity. 

" How pure at heart and sound in head, 
With what divine affections bold, 
Should be the man whose thought would hold 
An hour's communion with the dead ! 

In vain shalt thou or any call 

The spirits from their golden day, 
Except like them, thou too canst say : 

•My spirit is at peace with all.' 

They haunt the silence of the breast, 

Imiginations calm and fair, 

The memory like a cloudless air, 
The conscience as a sea at rest." 



68 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

So let US remember to train the minds of the 
children in clear and comprehensive perception, 
accurate and complete memory, definite expres- 
sion, vivid imagination, in order to lift, expand, 
and vivify their spiritual ideals ; we must show 
them what beauty and harmony are, by clear 
observation of their representation in nature and 
human action ; they will then remember more 
definitely and compare more justly, so as to 
deduce more clearly abstract law and order, truth 
and justice, love and purity, and so build up living 
conceptions of the Personality which they strive 
towards. In the moral and spiritual universe, we 
breathe the atmosphere of these great ideals, and 
grow into them unconsciously, as the child grows. 

Yet, again, by the discipline of retribution, by 
the experience of pain as a natural penalty, we 
are sometimes driven back to high ideals from 
which we have strayed ; we are forced to rein- 
state them as an incentive to duty ; then the will 
is aroused to active participation in the struggle. 
The conscious will is the final agent in the direc- 
tion of soul-development and growth. Even when 
all other help and chastisements have failed, where 
the environment seems all degrading, where hab- 
its of conduct have been inevitably opposed to 
moral elevation, nature, with kind compulsion 
under seeming cruelty, continually strengthens 
the ideal of law by heavy retribution ; till, through 



EDUCATION OF THE SOUL 69 

Struggle and antagonism, the will becomes capable 
of exercising an energy equal to the conquest of 
all these untoward moral influences, and sets the 
face of the hero straight forward and his steps 
upward and onward to give him the most tri- 
umphant soul-progress, and enable him to outstrip 
all the apparent vantage of happier influences. 

I came out of a school of ragged little urchins 
as they were making their way through the slush 
and mire of the narrow alley that led to the street. 
A boy of ten carried on his back his little brother 
from the kindergarten ; he reached a broad stone 
at the entrance of the alley, running a gantlet of 
snow-balls and mischievous attacks to pull his 
brother from his back, then he set the little fel- 
low, whose stolid countenance showed no fear or 
doubt, upon the stone, and turned about with 
undismayed front to his foes. He vanquished 
one after another with stout heart, and repeatedly 
resumed the attempt to carry his little brother off 
the field ; I watched him, victor in the sixth con- 
test, at last shoulder his trusting burden and dart 
across the crowded street with him, all alert to 
avoid the cars and heavy teams. I could but 
admire his determined pluck and persistence as 
well as his stout imperturbability of aspect under 
all these difficulties. As I stepped from my car 
to reach my home, I met a very different crowd 
of school-children. I watched one of them about 



70 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

the size of my little hero, but he was muffled as if 
for the Arctic regions ; he was led by a maid, and 
looked timid and babyish. After all, I thought, 
the compensations of life are a tolerably good bal- 
ance of opportunities ; this rich boy might almost 
envy the poor boy his chances of growth, physi- 
cal as well as moral. How much more it is to 
a boy to have a well-trained will and a habit of 
fearless and prompt action, a steady power of 
resistance, and an unflinching courage and resolu- 
tion, than to have fine clothes, a luxurious home 
or, perhaps, even a life full of love and innocence 
without them ! 

We must feed the child's soul, also, with the 
ideals expressed by those of clear moral vision, 
the spiritual leaders of the race, they who show a 
supreme genius for righteousness and the most 
perfect fealty to truth ; the martyrs, the seers, the 
teachers, the preachers, of humanity, — how their 
utterances, their lives, and their death-scenes lift 
our ideals, and inspire us to strive for all divine 
possibilities of humanity ! The embodiment of 
our highest conception of character in a great 
magnetic human personality is the most powerful 
influence for good which comes from our earthly 
surroundings. A great and true soul is the very 
bread of life to us ; its possessor transcends all 
our ideals in his own life, and has the communicat- 
ing force of all this complex union ; he is the way 



EDUCATIOiY OF THE SOUL 7 1 

the truth and the life to weaker and. lower spirit- 
ual natures. We construct from him the way to 
God, and to the extent of his likeness to God we 
see God. 

Yes, we offer ourselves to the child as a pattern 
for his ideals ; we know that we must train him in 
the spiritual life by the same laws that operate in 
his natural life. Whatever he thinks and feels and 
does, that he will continually become. There is 
no other rule of growth than the assimilation of 
nourishment and the exercise of function. 

This throws upon the teacher a heavy responsi- 
bility, but an immense inspiration ; it calls him to 
unceasing vigilance and spotless behavior ; it keeps 
the heavens open above him, and urges him to 
glorious effort. 

" Stay not for rest though dreams be sweet, 
Start up and ply your heavenward feet ; 
Is not God's oath upon your head 
Ne'er to sink back on slothful bed, 
Never again your loins untie, 
Nor let your torches droop and die, 
Till when the shadows thickest fall 
Ye hear your Master's midnight call .'' " 



CHARACTER AS AN OBJECT OF 
SCHOOL EDUCATION 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE MASSACHUSETTS TEACH- 
ERS' ASSOCIATION, NOV. 26, 1887. 



Fellow Teachers, — I am glad to speak to you 
to-day, because I am burdened with my message 
to you, because I want to feel your responsive 
sympathy and the inspiration of your courage, as 
well as the wisdom of your experience. I ask you 
to look at this great subject of the school educa- 
tion of to-day; the school education of this city and 
this State, nay, of this whole country, in the light 
of its actual conditions, — conditions unparalleled in 
history, — to look at it penetratively, inclusively, 
comprehensively, as to the demands of the situa- 
tion, the times, the State ; as to the demands of our 
national security, of civilization, of humanity, and 
the progressive spirit of the age, — and tell me 
whether character is to be reckoned among its 
objects, and where in the scale of importance it is 
to be placed. 

72 



CHARACTER AND SCHOOL EDUCATION 73 

What is the situation of the schools to-day as to 
their material? Think of the question, and apply 
it fairly and broadly to the existing conditions of 
our population. If you should spend six months, 
as I have but now done for the first time, in going 
from school to school in this city, you would, I 
venture to say, be almost overwhelmed with the 
gravity of the question I have propounded, — 
overwhelmed with the complications of the situa- 
tion, the complexity of the material. Go into one 
school, for example, and look into the yards at 
f ecess, stand in the main hall as the children troop 
in from recess to disperse to their several rooms. 
What a seething mass of humanity is before 
us ! Children of every nationality, of every social 
grade, of every form of political and religious in- 
heritance, of every possibility of development, 
gathered within one cordon of equal rights and 
privileges, of equal restrictions and limitations. 
As I have watched them, I have seen in them the 
agitated convolutions of a nation's brain, or the 
arterial circulation of a nation's heart, for that they 
are really to be in a few years. The problem 
which confronts us is unprecedented. What sort 
of training shall be brought to bear on so many 
diverse and alien elements, to unify, to integrate, 
to harmonize them sufficiently to handle them as 
one school .'* We might hear in this noisy tumult 
as many native tongues as modern society pro- 



74 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

duces ; sec as many race types as are found on 
the globe ; and as they pass on in the procession, 
we see an epitome of that vast phenomenal migra- 
tion which is pouring from the shores of the Old 
World over our parallels from sea to sea, filling 
our valleys, occupying our towns, ruling our cities, 
overflowing our original population with the most 
heterogeneous and disintegrating accumulation of 
forces and elements that were ever brought to- 
gether in history. 

But stand with me, for a while, in this grammar- 
school corridor, and observe this file of seven ot- 
eight hundred, perchance a thousand, boys and 
girls, as they pass up the stairways to their school- 
rooms; and think of the increasing multiplication 
of this host, not less than three hundred and fifty 
thousand in your Massachusetts schools to-day, and 
the progression of numbers is a geometrical one. 
They are coming in to receive your training, 
according to your theory of what it ought to be, — 
how broad or how narrow, how fundamental or 
how superficial, how limited or how far-reaching, — 
as your ideal of school education shall shape it. 
They are coming into their places for the hour or 
the day } No ; for the days and months and years 
of their growing-time, for what is potentially their 
lifetime. Remember, adapt your ideal to this 
condition of comparative duration, of comparative 
importance as the seed-time of life. They are com- 



CHARACTER AND SCHOOL EDUCATION 75 

ing in for the most part in these grades to their 
only opportunity for right development, from 
homes, or from no homes, or from worse than 
none ; they are trooping in from pernicious compan- 
ionships, from ignorant and lawless surroundings, 
from the infection of the street, to catch the forma- 
tive intention of our institutions, to receive the 
touch of our civilization, to be led on to the thresh- 
old of participation in our family and national 
life. They are coming into the circle of your per- 
sonal guardianship, as their fathers and mothers 
have come into this free land, because they have 
been invited and encouraged in every way, because 
they have been compelled into our schools, and we 
have undertaken to do our best for them ; we have 
dared to offer to build them into the State ; we 
have had the courage and the faith to put cunning 
tools into their hands, and to show them how to 
use them ; we have proposed to endow them with 
the matriculation of our intellectual heritage, of 
our grand estate of intellectual possibilities, that 
they may obtain skill and power, perhaps political 
or educational dominance, among us. In this 
crowd are our own children of Plymouth Rock 
traditions. They are all together, one body, for 
coincident training and education. 

Do we know what we are doing .-^ Have we such 
unquenchable faith in the leaven of our inherit- 
ance.? Will the organic qualities of our national 



"jG THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

institutions reach so far, permeate so vast a con- 
glomeration, inoculate so infinite a number of 
personalities with the virus of our original inci- 
siveness of conscience, of our fathers' lofty ideals 
of action ? 

We have a grand inheritance of character, thank 
God ! As the Carboniferous Age packed the solid 
earth with its plant-life, and stored up in this great 
continent resources of material heat and light suf- 
ficing for all and forever, though its myriad acres 
should become so many homesteads for the repre- 
sentation of every town and village in the whole 
world, — so Puritanism stored up its mines of solid 
integrity, purity, and faith for the spiritual warmth 
and light of all the souls that shall flock to its bor- 
ders : an exhaustless supply equal to the infinite 
demand! But suppose those mines are not worked, 
those accumulated moral forces not applied, the 
talent left buried and hid in the earth, the factories 
of our manhood and womahood not supplied with 
this fuel, what then ? Character left out of our 
schools, our educative organizations, our universi- 
ties ? 

Do we not see, then, that our conditions of mate- 
rial for school education are phenomenal ? that the 
times are exigent in their demand ? that we have 
a tide to sway which will tax all our protective and 
directive forces ? that we cannot afford to leave 
out of primary, grammar, or high school courses 



CHARACTER AND SCHOOL EDUCATION yj 

the education of that supreme controlling power, 
the individual will and conscience ? that we viust 
have a place in our scheme for the evolution of 
soul as the inclusive germ of right manhood and 
womanhood ? 

This great influx of various life is a grand 
opportunity to prove the virtue of our transcendent 
principles of national unity and growth. In the 
seething caldron of our schools, as well as of our 
civic population, we must preserve the regulative, 
the unifying, the alchemizing, element of our rela- 
tions to eternal truth ; if we so materialize our 
educative plans as to leave out the soul, we are in 
the path of disintegration and destruction as a 
nation, a state, or a school-system. The schools 
must deal with the immortal part, the essential 
element of growth of these seventeen million chil- 
dren within our schoolrooms. Is it not an over- 
whelming problem which is before us ? How to 
humanize, how to civilize, how to nationalize, may 
I not say how to spiritualize, them as they come 
into our ranks ? I will not gauge my proposition 
to any limiting relationships or titles of religious 
creed or sect, — not to Puritanism, not to Protest- 
antism, not to Roman Catholicism, not to Juda- 
ism, neither to Buddhism, nor Agnosticism. I 
gladly leave all theology to the churches ; I will 
choose the word, if I can find it, that will stand 
for the most liberal education of the whole man, 



y8 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

with the soul as the supreme factor of that man- 
hood. How can you leave it out ? How dare you 
ignore it ? How can we train the child, as we have 
been trying to do — all but his soul? It seems to 
me the rcdnctio ad absurduni of educational policy. 
I say it would be a splendid achievement to deal 
successfully with the problem of absorbing into 
our national life all these diverse and fertilizing 
currents which immigration provides at such an 
unexampled pace. If we can but preserve our 
assimilative power as a civilized and Christianized 
people, how rich and complex our national life 
may become ! It is easy to see what a fine fruit 
all this foreign graft might give us. I have no 
doubt that we have much to be grateful for in the 
germs now being wrought into our body politic — 
yes, even into our schools — here in Massachu- 
setts. How narrow and stilted and exclusive the 
hereditary Puritan type is capable of becoming 
without interference. Heaven preserve me from 
surmising ! I am glad the warm heart, the ample 
generosity, the kindly courtesy, the ardent patriot- 
ism, of the Irish blood is kindling the cooling stra- 
tum of New England life to something of its 
ancient fervor. I welcome the various flavors 
that are pouring into this seething caldron of 
which we have spoken. The broth will be all the 
more spicy and nutritious when it is thoroughly 
boiled down ; but we teachers are looking down 



CHARACTER AND SCHOOL EDUCATION 79 

into the bubbling vortex, with the responsibility 
of producing therefrom a savory and healthful 
sustenance for future generations. The harmoniz- 
ing, the nationalizing, of all these foreign elements 
seems to be an immediate and paramount duty. 
I believe that in our schools, as in our cities and 
in our whole land, we should constantly strive to 
forget the various nationalities represented by the 
newer and changing population, and nationalize 
all at once as Americans, the sooner the better : 
no Irish, no Italians, no Germans, no French, 
only Americans, not even " Irish Americans," 
or "the foreign element;" but as soon as these 
whom we have so cordially invited among us are 
domiciled as families, as soon as their children 
are in our schools, they, children and all, as well 
as we and our children, are Americans. They, as 
we, have one flag to fight for, one country, and 
one alone, one title and one inheritance ; and 
should be loyal to one citizenship only. 

We have asked them and they have come, not 
to be false to their past, but, having chosen their 
future, to be true to the supreme fealty they 
have adopted ; to call themselves above all Ameri- 
cans, and to stand by the law and order of the 
country into whose borders they have hastened in 
presumable good faith and honesty. 

Produce in our schools the sentiment of na- 
tional unification, of an integral connection with 



80 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

American institutions, and ideas of patriotic pride 
in American homes, American schools, the Amer- 
ican honor, and the American ideal of loyal and 
orderly free government. Do you doubt whether 
this be a part of your duty? As well doubt this 
as any other conception of your duty lying within 
the realm of the sentiments and emotions. But 
if, as I suppose you will all concede, the schools 
are the safeguards and training-ground of our 
national and civil recruiting body, then the teach- 
ers are at work preparing this body corporate for 
service which shall be preservative and strength- 
ening, rather than weakening and destructive, to 
the State. How can they do this without arous- 
ing the affections, stimulating the loyalty, exalt- 
ing the ambitions, of every recruit t They must 
work upon the soul of every child, for these are 
soul-functions. Are they less important to the 
State than the ability of each recruit to read, write, 
and reckon t Will they serve the State less than 
mere intellectual acquisitions.'' Do you not see 
that the school as an arm of the State must work 
supremely upon the activities of the soul .'* If 
the law of the land lead the children into the 
exercise of intellectual and mechanical power 
alone, it is preparing, perhaps, the dynamite bomb, 
or the riotous mob, or the cancerous corruption, 
which shall recoil upon itself within a decade or 
two. 



CHARACTER AND SCHOOL EDUCATION 8 1 

Perhaps you may say, '' I agree that good morals 
should be inculcated in school, right conduct 
should be demanded, but why speak of character ? 
That belongs to the family and the church as an 
educational responsibility." Did the existing con- 
ditions of our home and church work suffice for 
this, I would not so emphasize the part of the 
school in it, but who will claim that this is done ? 
In fact, the great mass of public-school population 
in our large cities derives no benefit from the edu- 
cative opportunities of the family or the church. 
Will any one deny that } Besides, if the schools 
hold the children in their embrace during almost 
their entire waking hours, they so thoroughly 
grasp the balance of opportunity, that home and 
church are of little avail against them. If, in lieu 
of using this opportunity for character, it is found 
to be neglected, there is no resource for church or 
family but to wrest the children from the hands 
of the State, and place them in home or church 
schools ; and if this has been largely done, what 
wonder, or whose the blame } 

I lay the main stress of my plea for character 
education upon the needs of the primary and gram- 
mar schools, because they are greatest, both as 
respects time and material, and there rests the bur- 
den of my appeal ; but I believe the high schools are 
not exempt from responsibility. There comes a time 
when the young soul, emerging from the careless- 



82 THR SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

ness of childhood, awakes to a sudden consciousness 
of its relations to itself, to the universe, and to 
immortal issues. If the teacher is without power 
to guide in such a crisis, without power to awaken 
and healthfully direct the sense of responsibility 
for character, without the soul-life in himself which 
makes him heart-wise and soul-helpful, he is terri- 
bly out of place, and has mistaken his vocation, 
though he be a master of all literature, science, and 
art. I have rejoiced' to hear Dr. Eliot of the 
School Board, on more than one occasion, recog- 
nize and emphasize most earnestly this crown- 
ing responsibility for the divine relationships of 
every soul within the moulding grasp of the in- 
stitution, or about being graduated from the Alma 
Mater. 

Perhaps the teachers will say that the rules of 
the school regulate conduct ; certainly they do, in 
a very narrow sense. Conduct is a word which 
admits of many applications. The rules of the 
school are for the government of conduct only as 
it relates to school relations and duties ; so I con- 
ceive their application. I remember a short inter- 
view I had with the master of a school, in regard 
to one of his pupils. *' How does it happen," I 
said to him, ** that his mark for deportment is so 
low } Is he a bad boy .'* " — '' Oh, no," was the reply ; 
" he is a very good boy, but his conscience hasn't 
developed in the direction of his school duties." 



CHARACTER AND SCHOOL EDUCATION 83 

I admired the ready expedient, the tact, and the 
skill of phraseology exhibited in this reply, but I 
perceived that the marks for school conduct had 
no reference to character. Is it not so in all our 
schools ? Conduct does not there imply anything 
beyond outward conformity to the regulations 
of the schoolroom, and a trivial offence of posture 
or occupation is visited with sterner retribution than 
a serious offence against good morals. I think in 
the very school of which I speak, some boys who 
stood high on the roll of school conduct were well 
known to have habits of open and heinous vice. 
I heard one, who had excellent opportunity for 
knowing, say of a grammar master, not a hun- 
dred miles away, '' A boy can lie and steal and use 
profane language without any notice from him, but 
if he catches a boy with a piece of chewing-gum 
in his mouth, he gives him an awful thrashing." 
So have I seen constantly, as I pass from school- 
room to schoolroom, an oppressive attention to 
the "mint, anise and cummin," to the slightest 
detail of external order, while the weightier intel- 
lectual matters, enthusiastic attention, a knowledge 
of the lesson, an effort to understand, were all 
postponed and constantly hindered and interrupted 
by the teacher's narrow ideal of conduct. When 
will the teachers learn that the mind of the child 
and the soul of the child grow from within outward, 
like a plant ; that conduct is the outcome of char- 



84 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

acter, that external behavior is the expression of 
the inward spirit, that inspiration is the finest reg- 
ulator of conduct, and that external order can be 
secured effectually only through the absorbed 
attention which is spontaneous under the inspira- 
tion of the work or the teacher, or through the 
controlling power of affectionate loyalty to the 
interests of the school ? I passed a half-hour in a 
class-room at one of our evening schools lately ; 
and although the class was more or less restless 
before the teacher took up the lesson, yet, as soon 
as he did, their eager interest produced an imme- 
diate hush, and the perfect quiet which grew spon- 
taneously out of the master's absorbed command 
of his subject and the absorbed attention of the 
class, was a thorough illustration of the superiority 
of inspiration to criticism, as a corrective of out- 
ward disorder. So I discern that even in matters 
of school conduct alone, the effectual method is 
the arousing into activity of the soul-functions. 
You cannot ignore the soul in school education. 
But some will say, the school is for intellectual 
development. That sounds rather narrow in these 
days of enthusiasm in the direction of manual 
training. The body, as the tool and home and 
sub-partner of the mind, is found to be an essen- 
tial factor in the education of the child. What ! 
the body and the mind, but not the soul } The 
senses, the hands, all the organs of outward per- 



CHARACTER AND SCHOOL EDUCATION 85 

ception and expression, the reason, the imagina- 
tion, the taste even, — all these avenues and 
means to a great end brought into exercise ; and 
the consummation, the grand purpose, the raison 
d'etre, forgotten, ignored, neglected ? the soul- 
functions and soul-development not even hinted 
at in your school courses ? Oh ! one may go starv- 
ing through the plodding recitations ; not a hint of 
the unseen realities, the unciphered verities, the 
grand background of all human activities and aims, 
character! nothing of that in the text-books, no 
ideals to feed the soul of the child upon, no stirring 
of love and reverence and fidelity, no appeal to the 
inward life which should be at the root of all this 
intellectual growth. The barren, barren tree of 
our curriculum on which no immortal fruit can 
ripen ! let its deciduous verdure fall away each 
year, until some perennial sap shall spring from 
a more vital and radical source to make the gardens 
of child-culture bloom as God meant they should. 
Perhaps some will ask, what do you mean by 
arousing the soul-activities ? How shall we do 
this by our school exercises without interfering 
with liberty of conscience and striking at the 
principle of our free institutions. That seems 
about as pertinent to me as a question how one 
can teach physics without infringing on some 
machine-patent. Are there not grand ideals which 
underlie every system of religious belief } Are 



S6 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

there not affections universally acknowledged to 
be supreme ? Is there not an unalterable law of 
right in the moral world, and unvarying moral dis- 
tinctions ? Is there anything sectarian in the idea 
of an ever-present creative love and power on 
which all creatures depend, and to which they owe 
their highest fealty ? Is there anything that 
belongs exclusively to Jew or to Greek, to Latin 
or to Saxon, in the obligation to choose right 
rather than wrong, to exercise love instead of hate, 
to worship Him in whom we live and move and 
have our being, to call Him our Father, and to feel 
toward Him as children ? Is it more or less Ma- 
hommedan than Jewish, or than Christian, or than 
Pagan philosophy, to teach that the things which 
are not seen are eternal, and that eternal truth is 
within and behind all outward forms and processes ? 
I recall the beautiful descriptions of the schools of 
Pythagoras, where soul-training was the constant 
and pronounced method ; the white-robed ranks, 
engaged in hymns of praise with every morning 
and evening sacrifice, and all the Greek excellence 
of achievements devoted to the deities, — their 
athletic, intellectual, and spiritual exercises only a 
form of worship. When shall we be able to build 
up character on the basis of this recognition of 
what is real and fundamental ? There is not a 
child in our schools, however dirty, stupid, brutish, 
or vicious, who is not sensitive to such an inspira- 



CHARACTER AND SCHOOL EDUCATION 8/ 

tion, and who will not respond to its appeal sooner 
or later. What glorious opportunities we have to 
make that appeal ! The returning blessings of 
each new day, as they fall upon us from an unseen 
hand, are waiting for our appreciation and thankful 
attention ; the close relations of school which in- 
volve the affections and stimulate the emotions so 
constantly, open the door for the expression of the 
soul. The blind cannot lead the blind, the power 
of inspiration is the overflow of inspiration. And 
how one may go thirsting through the desert of 
the natural science and geography work in many of 
the schools ; and in all of them be suddenly brought 
to the wall just as the glory was about to burst 
through the works of the Lord, while the eyes of 
the children are looking and waiting in vain. I 
wish I could convey to you the sense of mockery 
and disappointment that comes over me as one 
life-structure after another is investigated in a 
class-room ; all its wonders catalogued and its ana- 
tomy recited to every detail, and then, — a great 
blank where all the feast lay spread, the curtain 
dropped, and the multitude sent away empty ! Of 
what account is the dissection of the oyster and 
the clam, the sponge and the star-fish } It is all 
so much rubbish, and a valley of dry bones, where 
no one has been allowed to touch the thread of 
inspiration running through all its labyrinth of 
structure and type : the design, the adapation, 



88 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

the providence, and the immanence of creative love 
and care : God near at hand, in the leaf, in the 
rock, in the earth-forces and earth-productions, in 
every image and expression of life : God in the 
heart-beat, in the pulse, saying each instant, " My 
child ;" in the breath of life, whether in the mollusk 
or the mammal, the creative thought in its ever- 
evolving processes and transmutations, for the child 
to see, to trace, and to feel, until his soul responds 
in faith and affection, in worship and in obedience. 
I declare that there is no other way to reach con- 
duct legitimately or permanently or thoroughly, but 
through character as an outgrowth of soul-activity. 
The human being, I reiterate, is like a plant in its 
methods of growth, not like a clod which rolls amid 
the adhesive clay and gathers accretions : our out- 
ward forms of action are moulded by our inward 
thoughts and feelings. 

Some teachers admit that character is the inclu- 
sive aim of education, but propose to attain it 
through the accretion of good habits, through the 
discipline of the will, through a wholesome sense 
of the natural penalties of transgression of the moral 
law. These, indeed, are well and necessary, but 
they do not go to the core. They, too, are in a 
degree external ; they do not involve the soul- 
activities so much as they do the judgment and 
reason and the purely intellectual power of concen- 
trated attention. Even as a physiological process 



CHARACTER AND SCHOOL EDUCATION 89 

the conscious will comes into play only in those 
channels of vibration which the unconscious will 
has opened ; when awakened aggressively it usually 
comes to a point of equilibrium with opposing 
vibrations, a condition which precludes activity in 
any direction ; the channels of brain vibration are 
clogged with opposing currents, until some over- 
powering wave of absorbed emotion clears the way 
for the action of the unconscious will, and the work 
is accomplished by inspiration which could not be 
even begun by resolve. Tell your pupils twenty 
times to stand erect, to march in exact step, to 
keep in line, to be quiet as they file up and down, 
and with the best intention in the world there 
will be more or less disorder and irregularity and 
undue noise ; but strike the piano or the drum, and 
attune their muscles to rhythm and harmony, 
absorb their attention, harmonize their movements 
unconsciously, and perfection of detail is at once 
accomplished. 

Or suppose a pupil listlessly turning over the 
leaves of his book, sitting slouchingly and pas- 
sively at his desk : you know that to try to arouse 
his will is not so effectual an instigation to real 
study as some strong motive to ambition, some 
sudden accession of real interest in his subject, or 
some arousing of his whole nature by an absorbing 
idea. This is one of the lessons I wish the teachers 
could learn : How ineffectual is their endless fault- 



90 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION' 

finding and trivial correction to secure good order ; 
how paralyzing their nervous chatter or impatient 
scolding becomes to the real power of the pupils 
for doing what is urged upon them ; how much 
more to the purpose is one wave of enthusiastic 
interest than a thousand pattering drops of expos- 
tulation and reprimand ! And I wish, also, that we 
could all observe how futile is most of our en- 
deavor to arouse the sense of duty without having 
first aroused the affections, in either their human 
or divine relations. Habits have their accumulative 
power, but outward habit is as nothing before 
inward habit ; it is the habit of thought, of feeling, 
the habit of desire and affection, that overcomes 
at last and makes the man what he is. 

Do we trust to the silent and unexpressed influ- 
ence of the scientist to produce scientists } or 
does the man who knows any matter of scholarship 
trust to that knowledge to produce scholars, with- 
out active effort to stimulate their desire for 
knowledge .'' 

Now, again, I hear some say, that the high char- 
acter of the teacher, the models of outward con- 
duct in the schoolroom, the recognized require- 
ments of society, the patterns of worthy living 
furnished by reading or by chance attention to 
individuals, will, without special pleading, or even 
without open and explicit inculcation, build up char- 
acter in the school because our schools are so 



CHARACTER AND SCHOOL EDUCATION 9 1 

well equipped, so thoroughly built up ! I conceive 
all this to be about as adequate for that attain- 
ment as a case of minerals in the room, about 
which nothing is ever said, for the acquisition of 
the science of mineralogy. In fact, it suggests a 
characteristic passage in " Our Mutual Friend," 
where such a doctrine is touched for our benefit in 
Dicken's inimitable manner. 

Says Mortimer Light wood to his chum Eugene 
Wrayburn, complaining of their extravagance : — 

" * Your vagaries have increased the bill' 

" ' Call the domestic virtues, vagaries ! ' exclaimed 
Eugene, raising his eyes to the ceiling. 

*' ' This very complete little kitchen of ours,' said 
Mortimer, * in which nothing will ever be cooked ' — 

" ' My dear, dear Mortimer,' returned his friend 
lazily, lifting his head a little to look at him, *how 
often have I pointed out to you that its moral 
influence is the important thing } ' 

" ' Its moral influence on this fellow ! ' exclaimed 
Lightwood, laughing. 

" ' Do me the favor,' said Eugene, getting out of 
his chair with much gravity, ' to come and inspect 
that feature of our establishment which you rashly 
disparage ; ' with that, taking up a candle, he con- 
ducted his chum into the fourth room of the set 
of chambers — a little narrow room which Vv^as 
very completely and neatly fitted as a kitchen. 



92 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

'See,' said Eugene, 'miniature flour-barrel, roll- 
ing-pin, spice-box, shelf of brown jars, chopping- 
board, coffee-mill, dresser elegantly furnished with 
crockery, saucepans and stew-pans, roasting-jack, 
a charming kettle, an armory of dish-covers. The 
moral influence of these objects, in forming the 
domestic virtues, may have an immense influence 
upon me. In fact, I have an idea that I feel the 
domestic virtues already forming.' 

" 'How can you be so ridiculous, Eugene.'*' said 
Mortimer. ' But if I could find you in earnest for 
one minute I would try to say an earnest word to 
you.' 

*' ' An earnest word t ' repeated Eugene. * The 
moral influences are beginning to work : say on. 
In this desire for earnestness, I trace the happy 
influences of the little flour-barrel and coffee-mill. 
Gratifying very.' " 

^^Earnestness !'' Oh, yes, the good old Saxon 
word, — how much it involves the soul ! — to yearn, 
to long fervently. It is not so much a matter of 
method as of essence and of end. I confess to 
undying enthusiasms about methods of instruction, 
about courses of study, about all the law and se- 
quence of intellectual development ; and as I follow 
my present duty as a school-official, I find myself 
quick to remark all that, — to enjoy the work that 
is done in the best way ; to be glad when I see the 



CHARACTER AND SCHOOL EDUCATION 93 

end attained easily, rather than with unnecessary 
difficulty ; and I exult that the art of teaching is 
recognized as an art ; that we are beginning to 
understand the principles of mind-growth ; and that 
school education is assuming the proportions of a 
science. But more and more I am oppressed with 
a sense of my responsibility in demanding char- 
acter as the grand, the inclusive and supreme 
object of all this complex effort and expenditure ; 
character as the all-embracing goal to which we 
must lead these 350,000 children of the State. I 
welcome the intellectual and the manual trainins: 
because they are the adjuncts and ministering 
servants of soul-culture, which alone tends to 
character. I welcome the prospect of that com- 
plete ideal of education, which starts equally with 
the three elements of the child's being, — body, 
mind, and soul, - — and develops them all from 
infancy in their natural order; which offers to the 
mind, perceptions, and to the heart, sentiments ; 
which attempts to aid the struggle of the soul, as 
well as of the mind and body, in the earliest period 
of life ; which presents the forms of nature to the 
child as images of the thought of God ; which 
fosters the child's faith in unseen presences, and 
develops his intuitive belief in a heavenly Father. 
You know I refer to the kindergarten, which 
seems to have found the secret of that harmony 
of human development which involves every part 



94 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

of the child. A harmony which disappeared after 
the Greek culture, hke a stream running under- 
ground, to spring into life in these latter days 
for us and for our children, that a rounded and 
complete, all-involving education may be realized 
again. I hail the day when it shall start every 
activity of child-nature on the basis of the su- 
preme importance of character ! I hail the day 
when it shall treat the forms of life which it 
studies with reverence and love as the design 
and pattern of God's loving infinitude of power ; 
when the natural science and observation work 
shall minister above all to the soul and fix its 
divine attachments ! I hail and bless the day 
when its vietJwds of love shall creep into the pri- 
mary schools, and climb up into the great grammar 
schools where I have taken you to discover the 
conditions of your material ! Then no longer shall 
the impatient frown, the angry word, the attitude 
of disgust, and the stroke of the rattan express the 
relations of the teacher to her class, — the poor 
unfortunates who have never a good soul-breath to 
breathe. Oh, what a day of vantage will that be 
for the Boston schools ! Now, here and there, 
some good master is a father to his flock : cares for 
the girls as if they were his daughters and for 
the boys as they were his sons ; there, like an 
oasis in the desert, verdure waves, wells of water 
slake the thirst, and generation after generation 



CHARACTER AND SCHOOL EDUCATION 95 

blesses the soul-fostering educator. Many a time 
I have held out my hands to kind and sympa- 
thetic teachers, full of sisterly and motherly com- 
passion, encouragement, and love, but oh, if they 
could all feel free to work for character, not 
covertly, not incidentally and waveringly, but 
openly, explicitly, steadily, inspirationally, and con- 
fidently, as well as wisely, taking it to be the 
one permeating and supreme purpose of child- 
training and development, — the land would have 
reason to call them blessed, and our heritage 
would prove ample for all that has been com- 
mitted to our trust ; then education would be 
harmonious and complete ; the divine thought of 
childhood would blossom out in all its activities ; 
all the exercise of mind and body, perception, 
expression, reason, would minister to the free 
growth of the soul, and the law of development 
would be obeyed in the child as in the flower, by 
the symmetry and right order of its parts, by the 
beauty of its complex unity. 

I have alluded to the ungraded classes, for they 
rest upon my heart. I am willing to leave to the 
gentlemen of the Board of Supervisors all the 
details of the class-room and the courses of study, 
if I might accomplish something for character in 
these schools. They make such pathetic appeals 
to the true teacher to save and uplift them through 
the power of love and motherliness. Yet, many a 



g6 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

time have I been haunted by the face of some 
Httle boy made an habitual truant by the unsym- 
pathy of the teacher in such a room, felt at every 
instant of school-time, and in every relation of the 
child to the school ; which assumed the depravity 
of his nature and the hopelessness of his outlook, 
and offered no helping hand, or even loving pity ; 
and, although I have thought I cared for arithme- 
tic, for geography, for the natural sciences, — yes, 
greatly, — and have sometimes " prated of nouns 
and verbs," yet, at such times I am ready to say, 
" I am determined to know nothing among you," 
save the nourishing of the heart, the education of 
the soul, the building up of character as an ob- 
ject of school education. Let the will be trained 
to prompt decision, to high resolve ; pile good habit 
on good habit, and right method on right method, 
until the involuntary action shall be, of necessity, 
according to that method ; until habit shall become 
organic, and conduct have its right determination ; 
but I would first, and above all, furnish the soul 
with pure and true ideals, exercise it in loving 
activities, teach it to abhor the evil and desire the 
good. I would support it by faith in the heavenly 
Father's love and care continually ; I would lead it 
to recognize that love and care in every form and 
structure of life, and in every human condition and 
activity ; and I would lead it to believe in the 
divine response to such recognition ; I would 



CHARACTER AND SCHOOL EDUCATION 97 

lead it to look to high inspirations and eternal 
realities ; to see that the outward and material 
forms are but the expression, the symbol, — nay, 
the demonstration, — of spiritual realities ; and I 
would let the little children hear the voice of ever- 
lasting truth and unchanging law in all the presen- 
tation of tangible processes which we can put 
before them for their discovery and comprehension. 
Because we have the immortal essence of soul 
to deal with in each of these human beings, for 
that, I believe, we are in the last result ac- 
countable. For all these outward forms of conduct 
are but the material expression (if I may so speak) 
of character ; they bear the same relation to its 
essence as the material and outward world bears to 
the mind which perceives it, or by which it ex- 
presses itself. The soul is an entity which in- 
volves the whole threefold being of man, and 
consummates itself in the organic result we call 
character. It is built up by the exercise of its 
functions, just as the mind and body are built up 
by the exercise of their functions. The activities 
of the soul involve the activities of the mind, but 
add to those activities the inspiration of its divine 
relations. All activities are the expression of 
entities. The body, the mind, the soul, — each 
expresses itself through activities, one equally with 
another, one as truly and distinctively as another. 
There can be no harmonious unfolding of the 



98 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

human being, except by the simultaneous develop- 
ment, in right subordination, of these powers of the 
unity of this complete existence. The mind is not 
developed by cramming it with facts ; the soul is 
not developed by cramming it with maxims, or by 
goading the will. The mind must be provided with 
images through the senses ; the soul must be pro- 
vided with ideals through the imagination and 
sympathy. The mind must exercise thought, the 
soul, affections, in order to growth. The mind 
must apprehend ; the soul must feel. The soul 
awaits your educative effort in earliest childhood, 
in every child, and to neglect its education is to 
neglect your greatest duty and your greatest op- 
portunity. You must provide an atmosphere for 
the divine breath of the soul ; you must be able to 
call it forth into the light of truth, into the air of 
purity, into the constant activity of love. I will 
not affront your intelligence by explaining how 
you can do this. You know that one can furnish 
nothing for another which he has not himself ; and 
to feed the soul, one must know what soul-food is, 
and have grown soul-strong, so that sweetness and 
light, truth and grace, shine out in his whole de- 
meanor, and call out the same attributes in others. 
The great secret of educative success is the sym- 
pathetic power to draw out what is hidden, and 
reveal it more and more. The kindergarten as 
Froebel conceived it, was a real blossoming of the 



CHARACTER AND SCHOOL EDUCATION 99 

child-nature into symmetry and beauty, into har- 
mony of its interrelated parts, into unity of its 
complex relations. The approach through mate- 
rial forms to the great underlying principles of all 
development, is one of the most characteristic and 
broadest, as well as deepest, features of the plan. 
It is a great point to lead the child to perceive in 
all tangible things only the symbol or demonstra- 
tion of intangible ideals and unseen truths, till he 
gradually comprehends the great principle of the 
continuty of law, and learns to read in the book of 
nature the immortal lessons of the soul. 

Whoever is afraid to take hold of these studies 
of natural science in a vital way, let him go to the 
kindergarten and learn h©vv to deal with the soul of 
the child ; how to lead the child into his relations 
with nature, with man, and with God, into all his 
endowments of body, mind, and soul, from the start, 
and all together : no warped and one-sided pulling 
this way and that, till the schools have produced 
that monstrosity, — a body and mind without a soul, 
physical and intellectual power, without character ; 
a partially developed and disordered human being, 
who can only illustrate the awful alternative, 
" What shall a man give in exchange for his soul .'' " 

I admit that home in its highest use is for the 
growth of the soul. Then, since all is now left 
for the school, let us bring the home influences 
and home atmosphere into the schoolroom. I 



100 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

bespeak your attention to this harmonizing and 
soul-educating power of the ideal of home as a 
factor of the school-life. I ask you to adopt the 
methods of a true home in your schools. I have 
seen such an atmosphere in some of the Boston 
schools. I have felt it as I entered the door. 
I have seen it shining from the face of every 
teacher. I have marked its responsive gleam in 
every pupil's behavior, and I have felt assured 
that here souls were being educated silently, 
perhaps, and unannounced, but immortally and 
divinely. Such schools ought to inspire all teachers 
and redeem the State. But, alas ! they are too few ; 
yet if these words of mine might arouse one echo, 
and that be repeated by many a thoughtful and 
willing teacher here and elsewhere, I should begin 
to understand why I was called here to take this 
work from the hands of one whose pure life and 
unremitting devotion left an unsullied lustre upon 
it. This, then, is the burden of my message to 
you, fellow-workers. If ever a generation of men 
and women needed to exalt character as the 
supreme object of education, it is ours ! If ever 
a responsibility for the life and growth of a great 
nation in the midst of threatening dangers, in the 
crisis of its formative agitation, in the heat of its 
alchemizing fires, if ever such a responsibility 
weighed heavily upon its educative and elimina- 
tive and assimilating powers, that responsibility 



CHARACTER AND -SCHOOL EDUCATION lOI 

weighs down upon us, upon you and me, this day 
and this hour ! a responsibility of holding up the 
highest and truest ideal of a national education ; 
an ideal that has for its lofty and inspiring 
standard, cJiaracter as the grand, inclusive, and 
supreme object of an harmonious education. 



THE RELATION OF THE SCHOOL 
TO CrnZENSHIP 



ADDRESS TO PORTLAND TEACHERS DURING A 
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 



We are on the eve of a new Olympiad. The 
streets are filled with excited processions ; banners 
wave and shouts reverberate all over our land. 
The little boys have paraded their train-bands up 
and down our streets ; the young men have had 
their torchlight processions ; and the wrestlers in 
the contest are hoarse with hurrahs, and deaf with 
the din of battle. If one could see, as in a bird's- 
eye view, the whole land, he would see wild agita- 
tion from one end to another, and feel the electric 
thrill which our great national elections arouse in 
every boy and man, may I not also say every 
girl and woman } What a vigorous and popular 
national feeling, what a united interest, all this 
indicates ! As the football of party watchwords, 
and of the personality of the leaders themselves, 
is tossed hither and thither, all hearts beat in 

102 



RELATION OF SCHOOL TO CITIZENSHIP 103 

sympathy with either one side or the other, and 
all eyes are riveted on the issue. But we, the 
teachers who go daily to our work, ask ourselves, 
What have we to do with such a scene ? We 
cannot avoid the reflection, that as one after 
another these epochs return and arouse the whole 
people, our classes of boys and girls are coming 
into them as actors, and all these important 
national questions will devolve upon them to 
settle. The stupendous truth is, that we are doing 
more to shape the national life of the future than 
any of the politicians or reformers can do, for we 
are educating all the future citizens of the land. 

We do not undertake to conduct political or 
military schools ; but we*are making the men and 
women who shall form the State, and that aspect 
of our training must come into our purposes and 
work in every particular. " What constitutes a 
State.?" 

We set our children to recite that noble verse, 
and we cannot improve upon its doctrine : '' Men 

— high-minded men," we answer, and these must 
be turned out of this workshop of men and women, 

— the school, — by far the greatest part from the 
public school. We pour into its curriculum all 
that can enrich the commonwealth through the 
medium of these growing members and elements 
of the State. We say they must be intelligent ; 
they must read, write, and cipher ; they must know 



104 '^^^^ SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

about the earth, their home, and about the people 
in it ; they must be wide awake and know how 
to use every faculty, ready to learn and to express 
themselves in science, art, and literature, that 
they may give to each other and to all men the 
results of their activities ; they must be healthy 
and strong, physically, that they may contribute 
health and strength and vitality to their genera- 
tion. All this means aptness and facility in 
doing what their hands or brains find to do, what 
needs to be done, what their age asks of them, — 
physiology, physics, manual training, the powers 
of observation developed. Then, above all, we 
need character ; the soul evolved for the lifting of 
the race, for the spiritual* as- well as physical and 
intellectual growth of the State and progress of 
the national life. Rounded, completed men and 
women we must produce to build into the life of 
the nation. 

We must not forget, also, that the family, the 
home, is the unit of the political body corporate ; 
and we must reach the home life of the next gen- 
eration if we would reach its political life. How 
nearly do we approximate these great ends } 

Every nation must train its material for future 
use in the government. The Prussian schools, the 
French schools, like the Roman, are so closely 
connected with the government, that they seem 
almost like the Spartan system which effaced the 



RELATION OF SCHOOL TO CITIZENSHIP 1 05 

home. This is too mechanical a relation to 
national life for the genius of free America. We 
cannot afford to blot out the home, to take out 
"the very pulse of the machine." The American 
idea is more in accordance with the natural 
instincts of humanity. The nation is for the 
citizen, not the citizen for the nation ; the home is 
the dearest possession of the people in their indi- 
vidual life, and in their ideal life also. " Stay at 
home, mother," said a brave soldier to his mother, 
who talked of going into the hospital; ''if home is 
broken up we have nothing to fight for, our cour- 
age will be gone." 

The home is also the dearest possession of the 
nation, and what we can do for that is the best 
that we can do for the State. So we teach the 
girls to sew and cook, and the boys to use tools 
and manage accounts, that not only fingers may 
be deft and cunning and time well occupied, but 
that all may help make comfort and happiness and 
virtue in our homes, and men and women may 
live in families, and bring up the generation to 
come most favorably and as nature directs. 

If we examine the progressive courses of study 
now provided for our public schools, I think we 
shall find all this multiform development provided 
for in reasonable measure. Look first at the kin- 
dergarten, which, in the leading cities, is now 
placed at the foundation of public-school instruc- 



I06 rilE SPIRIT OF ^IIE NEW EDUCATION 

tion. If you have studied its theories you know 
that they open up into the fullest development of 
every child. The initial idea is the Jiojue ; the 
mother's love and sympathy extended to each 
child, and nature, the mother of us all, leading the 
child to feel his relations with her, to hold her 
hand, sit in her lap, and rest in her bosom. The 
little one in the kindergarten says his '' good- 
morning" to the sun and his ''good-night" to the 
moon. He calls the flowers and the plants his 
friends, and the animals his playfellows. Every- 
thing about him shares his love, and in all he is 
taught to know the heavenly Father and to 
express reverence and gratitude to Him. All the 
plays of the kindergarten emphasize the child's 
sympathy with his fellows, and his unselfish care 
and helpful love for others. The child is put into 
intimate relations with nature, with man, and with 
God. 

This develops a healthful social life, and pre- 
pares him to become a useful member of society : 
all of which is so much toward making him a good 
citizen. In the plays he learns fraternity and the 
common humanities, and through the occupations 
he learns orderly industry, mutual helpfulness, the 
germ of social and national life. Of course, all 
that makes him a good child makes him a good 
element in the community of childhood ; it tends 
to make him grow into a good man, and, therefore. 



RELATION OF SCHOOL TO CITIZENSHIP 10/ 

into a good member of the community of men. 
This applies equally to the girls, and extends 
equally to the future woman. All that makes 
children symmetrical in their development, physi- 
cal, intellectual, and moral, is in the line of virtue, 
intelligence, and health in the body politic. The 
individuals makes up the community, and the sum 
of individual and private worth is the exponent of 
public worth and national greatness. 

Then in a well-arranged and psychological cur- 
riculum, all this work begun in the kindergarten 
goes on under new adaptations of circumstance 
and method in the primary school. Still the edu- 
cation of the senses and the growing relationship 
with outward nature : observation lessons in color, 
form, place, size, qualities of objects ; everywhere 
experiment and investigation by the hands and 
the senses, — plant and animal life, the human 
body, the sky and all that it offers to the child's 
wondering gaze, the earth, air, and water, all are 
made a constant study, with the sympathetic in- 
quiry and intelligent direction of the teacher ; un- 
til the child is everywhere met by phenomena 
which stimulate his mental activities, train his 
senses, and give facility to his physical powers, 
at the same time feeding his spiritual life, and 
preparing him to hold communion with all that 
meets his awakened consciousness and shows him 
to himself as part of a universal whole, and in 



I08 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

harmony with all things through love and truth. 
So his character (and thereby his conduct and 
manners) is gradually and permanently formed, and 
he is becoming that essential factor in a worthy 
and noble state, the progressive, single-minded, 
and honest man. I speak of these natural-science 
departments because they are comparatively new 
as parts of primary-school work. 

Of course the old paths of the three R's are 
trodden still, but are all vivified with this new life. 
Number, reading, and writing : how they teem 
with the wealth and enthusiasm of the natural- 
science work ! in connection with lessons on min- 
erals, flowers, and animals, or geographical stories 
and journeys, they gain new life and development. 
Drawing, moulding, and singing, beginning with 
the babes in the kindergarten, and growing more 
defined and accurate, more suggestive and ar- 
tistic, more varied in expression, all the way along 
through primary and grammar grades, round out 
this progressive and expansive building-up of 
the future citizen ; while physical exercises, all 
the way up, set each muscle and sinew in health- 
ful beauty, strength, and availability, so that his 
body may be able to work out his ideals. And if, 
in all this manifold growth and exercise, the soul 
of the child slips away into error, and wrong 
thought and action crowd out the right, and distort 
the manhood or womanhood, it is because some 



RELATION OF SCHOOL TO CITIZENSHIP 109 

cog in the wheel of the child's relations with 
home, school, or the street does not catch well or 
run smoothly, and meets too much friction ; then 
the real teacher will strain every nerve to reach 
and correct the fault, dealing with the personal 
experience and conscience. 

Now the pupil of the grammar school studies 
the human body specifically, and its laws are more 
distinctly understood in their relations to right and 
wrong habits. The statute of the State requires 
the teaching of the effect of alcoholic liquors. 
Here begins the first effort to meet the tempta- 
tions which thicken about the growing boy and 
threaten to make a brute of him. This is more 
palpably direct and important in its influence on 
citizenship than mere generalizations. How much 
or how little of this aggressive teaching is best 
for the child, must be decided by his surround- 
ings and his evident tendencies. I would deal 
very cautiously with such lines of instruction. I 
do not recommend the representation of images 
of vicious impulse and habit for the attention of 
children. I like to see evil killed by good, if it 
has not become so deeply rooted that only sub- 
soil ploughing will do ; but, at any rate, see to 
it that some thing interferes with the degrada- 
tion and indulgence of the animal appetites, and 
that we are to have a generation from our schools 
who are more human and less brutish ; that human 



no THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

life and character shall go on in its ev.olution 
towards the divine and immortal, and that our land 
shall not lose the lustre of its high beginning. 

Geography and history, as well as physics, con- 
duct the child to a broad outlook of study, and 
leave him at the threshold of the high school, 
with tastes indicated, habits formed, and some 
ground for the right selection of further subjects 
of study and tendencies of growth. If circum- 
stances and natural bent lead him to make his active 
connections with society, and thrust him into the 
arena of work and the struggle of life at once, he 
is still better prepared to undertake it than the 
embryo citizen has been at any time in the pre- 
vious history of the world. 

And now comes industrial training to complete 
the endowments which the public school offers to 
the coming generation. The boy must know how 
to take his place in the economy of the household. 
Give him the saw, the plane, and the hammer ; let 
his muscle grow hard, and his body become vigor- 
ous and elastic. Let him practise athletics and 
military drill, that he may be ready for service, 
public and private, so to be at least a unit that 
can be counted in the grand body politic. The 
girl learns housewifery, sewing and cooking, do- 
mestic economy and thrift, that the home may be 
a beneficent factor in our private and public life. 
I would like to take you to these classes and the 



RE LA TION OF SCHOOL TO CITIZENSHIP 1 1 1 

exhibits of their work. Already the homes re- 
spond in thankful appreciation of this blessing. 
Fathers, mothers, and brothers, grandmothers and 
grandfathers, come to the sewing and the cookery 
exhibits, and look with pride on a work which 
touches their comfort so closely, and makes home 
a centre of happiness for all. No surer purifier 
of national life exists than safe and happy homes, 
where three generations cluster about the hearth, 
and the mother knows no higher joy than to serve 
and keep them all within her loving fold. And so 
we educate the coming mother to be companion 
and inspirer of him who, for the most part, has 
to bear the brunt of the outside fight for life ; that 
she may understand and sympathize in all that 
befalls the race ; that she may form wise opinions, 
and inculcate virtue and honor from her throne in 
the kingdom of home ; and that she may gladly do 
her part in preparing loyal recruits for the great 
army of good citizenship that shall continually 
renew the life of the nation. And if the time is 
at hand when her ballot shall affect all the ques- 
tions of the day, — nay, if its foot is on our 
threshold, we can say we have educated our girls 
for such a crisis ; their knowledge and their enthu- 
siasm is not one whit behind that of our boys in 
all matters connected with the geography, the 
history, the government, and the possibilities of 
this great domain which they inherit, and their 



112 rilE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

judgment is as fully worth harvesting; they can 
bring vital and nourishing forces to bear on the 
laws and the policy, on the right representation of 
our affairs, municipal, state, or national ; they will 
breathe the spirit of home into the public councils, 
and hasten the day when sympathy, union, and 
harmony shall make strife to cease among men, 
and place our land in the vanguard of nations which 
learn war no more. 

For woman owes this debt to the state equally 
with man, and why should she not be allowed to 
pay it ? We become careless and thoughtless by 
the very prodigality of our blessings. We seldom 
think of the common benefactions of nature until 
we are deprived of them. We are in danger of 
taking as a matter of course the very richest of 
our gifts, without a suggestion that we owe a return 
to the source of those gifts commensurate with 
their extent and value to us. So the pupil in the 
public school may be in danger of appropriating 
as an independent right what he is indebted to the 
municipality for, and as much in duty bound to 
repay in some sort as if loaned him by a friend. 
I am always reminded strongly at the graduation 
of grammar-school classes, of this indebtedness of 
the child to the state, which has bestowed the 
best opportunities for education upon him, as if 
he were its especial care. What more could have 
been offered him were he the child of the most 



RELATION OF SCHOOL TO CITIZENSHIP 1 13 

honored citizen, to whose services the state owed 
its salvation ? It is right that the child of the 
public school should be reminded of this obliga- 
tion to the fostering care of the town where he 
lives. He has been supplied with all the luxuries 
of school education in these lavish days. He must 
be made to feel the strain of his relations to the 
giver. He must be led to exercise a lively grati- 
tude and wish to give back some of his acquired 
power and training to the service of the public, 
and share the responsibility of guarding, in his 
time, the interests of the next generation. The 
duties of citizenship should be made peremptory, 
and not to be cast aside in honesty. He is not to 
devote himself, first, or wholly, to his personal 
interests, but gladly to remember that his shoulder 
is to be put to the wheel, and that his gifts must 
be held at the public service ; that he must be a 
worker in the community, and help on its prog- 
ress and welfare. As he has freely received, so 
he must freely give ; not alone at some great crisis, 
but steadily as one of the members of the body 
which rises or falls in the scale according as its 
members rise or fall. To take an intelligent and 
unselfish interest in public affairs, not to shirk 
duty, to found a home and add its momentum of 
intelligence and virtue to the future state, is the 
duty of every man and woman in the land. This 
is a doctrine which is falling into such sad disuse, 



114 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

that I think the public conscience should be 
aroused in regard to it and Other primal duties 
and responsibilities of human life. The decrease 
of an intelligent native population is one of the 
lamentable features of the political situation, and 
results from the torpor of conscience among 
enlightened people on some of the fundamental 
requirements of the law of social as well as indi- 
vidual progress. 

I hear people saying sometimes, Patriotism is a 
very narrow virtue ; go out into a wider field of 
relationship, and love and serve humanity. I can- 
not agree with such a sublimated notion. As love 
of country is an instinctive love, an expansion of 
that purest of all emotions, — the love of home ; 
as it has inspired some of the most heroic and 
unselfish deeds of mankind ; as it has been 
strongest in the strong, and loftiest in the most 
exalted characters we have known ; as even Jesus 
wept over Jerusalem with the yearning of parental 
love, — I believe we may throw all such qualms to 
the winds, and trust ourselves to inculcate pa- 
triotism in our children from generation to gen- 
eration. Certainly, in our land and day, it is a very 
broad and inclusive sentiment, and almost coin- 
cident with a love of the race. 

But you ask : Is there not a specific course of 
preparation for citizenship which should inhere 
in our public-school courses t I reply : Let our 



RELA TION OF SCHOOL TO CITIZENSHIP I I 5 

teachers and educators see to it that our country's 
geography and history are studied with loyal en- 
thusiasm, and that civil government holds impor- 
tant place in school study. The Declaration of 
Independence, the Constitution, and the statutes 
of the Commonwealth should become a part of 
every boy's and girl's preparation for citizenship. 
Our most fervid and lasting national utterances — 
Washington's Farewell Address, Lincoln's Gettys- 
burg Oration, Lowell's Commemoration Ode — 
should be in the memory and hearts of every one 
of these who are to participate so soon in the active 
duties of American citizenship. I would try to 
furnish these who are to enter the struggle at 
once with a defence against our especial national 
temptations, — the love of money, greed of gain, 
lust for show and ofifice, the growing social and 
political corruption, and general contempt for 
modest worth and conscientious industry and 
labor. Try to teach the lesson that there is no 
small or great in duty, no need of applause, but 
that honor is due only to faithful performance 
of appointed service. Carry these moral axioms 
through all the school courses, and educate the 
children to an unconscious obedience to them. 

Let the boys and girls identify their own with 
their country's honor; bring them up to thrill with 
devotion at the thought of any service, any sacri- 
fice, she may call for ; let them love the flag and 



Il6 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

the name and symbols of American nationality, 
and strive to uphold their glory in the most ex- 
alted spirit. Let them sing our national hymns 
and songs, and recite with joy and pride the 
patriotic sentences of our statesmen and the pa- 
triotic stanzas of our poets. Teach them to read 
American authors and commemorate their genius. 
Emphasize the national festivals and holidays, and 
dedicate the birthdays of our heroes and our fa- 
mous men and women in science, literature, art, 
and nobility of life, to the ardent love, pride, and 
gratitude of the children. I know you would feel 
how much this has already been done in the 
schools, could you visit them freely. It is enkin- 
dling to the enthusiasm of the most hearty 
patriot among us, to hear a recitation in American 
history, or a lesson in American literature. We 
see at once that all hearts beat with passionate 
devotion as their voices resound the national an- 
them, and as they rehearse the grand struggles and 
conquests through which this free land has grown 
up to the foremost place it holds to-day. I am 
sure as I look into their faces, that a ''great 
uprising " would again answer the clarion call of 
our country's need, and the whole land, with all its 
diverse elements, would be flooded with the wave 
of patriotic sacrifice and as unstinted an outpouring 
of blood and treasure as greeted the guns of Sum- 
ter. I do not fear for our country's future unity, 



RELATION OF SCHOOL TO CITIZENSHIP WJ 

when I pass from school to school, though I see 
the stamp of many nationalities on the upturned 
faces, and hear the varied accents in which the 
tongues of the children syllable their loyalty ; for I 
recognize in all the supreme love of freedom and 
American institutions. I know that in the long 
measurements of history they shall seem no more 
alien than we whose ancestors came over two 
hundred years earlier to breathe the free air of 
liberty, and to found a government of the people, 
by the people, and for the people. I am not 
alarmed at the fact that some of our city schools 
are in the main, or wholly, made up of children of 
foreign parentage, not even when, in a class of 
thirty-five, I find French, German, Portuguese, 
Italian, Swede, Pole, Hungarian, Russian, and 
Irish, most of whom must be taught the English 
language ; for I see that their parents have fled 
from the Old World with ardent longing and 
purpose to make themselves and their children 
true Americans. I remember with deep emotion 
the devotion of the foreign-born citizens in all the 
great crises of our history, I see with gratitude 
the names of French, Irish, and Germans on our 
most glorious pages, and realize that many of our 
deathless names belong more to these children 
than they do to me. The truth is that they and 
we share alike the blood and the traditions of men 
who chose this land as their country, because the 



Il8 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

voice of freedom charmed their ears and drew 
them hither ; they saw its flag waving from afar, 
and were ready to leave fatherland to live under 
it, and will be ready to die for it whenever men- 
aced by a tyrant. They have done this in 
the past, and let me say again and again, that in 
our schools they are already and only Americans. 
They love to learn of our noble rivers, our lofty 
mountains, our vast plains ; they journey in imagi- 
nation with as much alacrity from one shore to 
another of our measureless heritage, their heritage 
as well as ours, and feel the same pride and sense 
of possession as the child of the Puritan. Let 
them enter into their inheritance : it is their as well 
as our promised land ; we are all settlers — the era 
of settlement is not yet at its meridian. It began 
with the earliest European colonies who sought 
these shores for a home, and will go on till every 
acre of our continent is peopled with the liberty- 
loving adventurers, and the strong in faith of 
every creed, of every clime, and of every nation 
who have sought, or shall seek, a better country. 
We must all join to prove this indeed the better 
country of their faith and their desire. 

So I can but wonder at the shallow distinctions 
which some of our good but narrow people are 
making among our children, our teachers, and our 
school-boards. Look down beneath this surface- 
agitation and find the deep current of American 



RELATION OF SCHOOL TO CITIZENSLIIP I 19 

loyalty, — steady, reliable, and conserving the 
united forces of many waters for the great flood- 
tide of the nation's life. Believe in it and receive 
it in sympathy, O teachers in our public schools ! 
for it holds the destiny of a continent in its grasp. 
Forget the walls of partition, nor constantly re- 
build them, for they are waiting to be broken 
down. The fires of every human altar are reach- 
ing out together to express the glow of an Ameri- 
can nationality, fusing all elements into the richest 
political organism of time. Let not our narrow 
bigotry, our short-sighted exclusiveness, refuse the 
lavishness of the gift, nor impeach the wisdom of 
our many-sided, broad, and progressive system of 
education. 

It remains, then, for future history to discover 
whether we shall be equal to the formation of such 
a state as is put within our moulding hands ; 
whether character shall prove so indissoluble an 
element of our nationality as to preserve its unity 
through such a crucial test as is now going on and 
may continue for generations. Is there faith and 
integrity sufficient to the task of assimilating such 
an influx of material } How much can we do, who 
stand at the gateway of the coming era of national 
life } Above all, we must exert ourselves to exalt 
virtue, purity, temperance, and truth, and to fix 
them as foundation stones in the lives we are per- 
mitted to touch, that as they go out to be built 



120 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

into the temple of our national life, they shall 
prove strong and uplifting, enduring because built 
upon the eternal rock of character. 

We build to-day upon a larger plan, 

The coming man. 
The ancient race to higher outlook strides, 
On broader seas our ship at anchor rides. 

The age's fashion 
Still clothes afresh Truth's fair ideal, 

And each great aim made real 
Lifts faith and work to loftier heights of passion. 

Nor we, mayhap, may grasp the span 

Of our last harvesting; the seed 
To crown the future with exalted deed 
Not yet is sifted by Time's winnowing-fan. 

Haply the poet's dream shall hold. 

And nature's age of gold 
Complete the cycle of humanity. 

When the full time is ripe. 

Is born the perfect type ; 
God's plan evolves the race that is to be 

When all the soul-activities are free. 
And life's full chord is perfect harmony. 

But while the generations fall asleep. 

Sow the good seed ye reap. 
Build on the old foundation, firm and sure, 

The virtues that endure. 
Revere the ancient rule 

Of church and school. 
Lift the proud pile by each well-tempered tool. 

And though to vast expansions grown, 

Integrity be still the corner-stone ; 

Honor and purity alone 
Rear its proportions true ; 

While faith shall round the dome 
Up to the spheric blue ; 



RELATJOaX of school to citizenship 121 

There strong-winged Hope shall fly 
Through widening arcs of love's refulgent sky. 
In that grand temple all our growing race 
Shall gather face to face 
In their eternal home ; 
For Thou, O Lord, hast been our dwelling-place. 



THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE WOMAN'S EDUCATION 
ASSOCIA TION 



The community exists for the nurture of the 
coming generation, as well as for the safety and 
prosperity of the present generation. In fact, as 
the primal object of all our social institutions is 
the well-being of the family and the best interests 
of the growing race, nothing concerns it more 
nearly than the right conditions and relations of 
the child. The schools, therefore, as the chief 
means of child nurture and training, are the most 
vital concerns of the community. 

I might speak of the necessity for wise legisla- 
tion in respect to public education in all its admin- 
istrative functions, for a judicious and enlightened 
guidance of all its details of policy, and for a gen- 
erous provision for all the material conditions of 
school-work, — such as ample buildings, pleasant 
playgrounds, well-appointed apparatus, books, tools, 
cabinets and museums, laboratories, gymnasiums, 
gardens, — liberal compensation for teachers, for 

122 



THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM 1 23 

that regulates the quality of the teacher, who is 
to be a greater factor in the formative influences 
for the child than perhaps any other. *' Mark 
Hopkins on one end of a bench and my boy on 
the other," said President Garfield, for it is the 
personal quality in teaching and the individual 
contact which tells. But I have chosen at this 
time to present especially for your attention the 
school curriculum ; because it has been the sub- 
ject of my careful consideration as supervisor in 
the revision called for by the school committee 
during the past year. Every subject of study, 
from the kindergarten throughout the whole 
course, has been discussed under the focussed 
lio:ht of its essential and related values as an ele- 
ment in the growth and efficiency of our educa- 
tional methods and results. 

There has been a very radical change in the 
course and methods of school-work during the 
last ten years. The old idea that school educa- 
tion was primarily for the purpose of stocking the 
child's mind with facts and rules has passed away, 
and the new idea that its purpose is the develop- 
ment of all the child's powers has been brought 
to the front. We study the natural activities of 
the child, and then seek to strengthen and har- 
monize them by exercise ; we offer as subjects of 
exercise the material things and processes about 
him, — minerals, plants, animals, and natural phe- 



124 ^^^^ SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

nomena with which he is famiUar ; we prescribe 
for him constant practice in the observation 
of these subjects, with experimental investigation 
in the plane of his intelligence, curiosity, and 
desire. We teach him reading, spelling, writing, 
grammar, and arithmetic ; not as ends of study, 
but as means of study ; not as facts, but as meth- 
ods of exercising his growing powers. We must 
put language, reading, spelling, grammar, and 
writing into his school-work, because they are to 
be his tools. He must learn to use them because 
they enlarge his sources of study and growth ; 
they increase his power of expression and com- 
munication ; they open for him doors to the great 
world of discoveries and activities within his 
growing reach. The greater his facility in using 
these tools, the wider his opportunity of growth, 
and the more complex his relations with nature 
and with man. We must so provide for the 
child's development as that it shall be in the 
natural order of his activities ; the exercise of 
the senses and observational powers, the satisfac- 
tion of his mental curiosity, the training of the 
memory, of the imagination, of the power of 
comparing, arranging, and grouping the knowl- 
edge he acquires through the exercise of the 
senses, of the inductive powers, the reasoning 
faculty, the taste and sense for beauty and har- 
mony, the desire for expression and communica- 



THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM 125 

tion, the constructive instinct, the social instinct, 
the religious instinct : All these must be exer- 
cised and developed symmetrically by the courses 
of study in our schools ; for they are the natural 
powers and activities of the human being, and 
quite as imperative in their demands upon educa- 
tive methods in youth as in maturity. 

It is plain that too much time must not be given 
to the mere practice in the handling of the tools 
and the construction of the scaffolding of the 
beautiful temple of education. To study the al- 
phabet, spelling by syllables and words, memoriz- 
ing the dictionary definitions of words, to drill on 
phonic elements without attention to the real 
significance of the word studied, or without the 
natural need of the word at all for purposes of 
expression, is wasting time on the merely mechan- 
ical appliances of education. To recite from 
verbal memory, like a parrot, to learn by rote, to 
study arbitrary rules, statistics, and useless facts 
about which there is no aroused interest, is to de- 
grade the mental power, and make the process of 
learning stultifying to the child's whole nature. 
The practice in using such tools as reading, writ- 
ing, number, drawing, must be in obedience to a 
felt want for such practice, aroused by a wholesome 
curiosity and joy in the activity of the natural 
powers. How easily and naturally will language, 
reading, writing, spelling, and such processes of 



126 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

embodying and interpreting thought and exercis- 
ing the mind be acquired, when the facts of knowl- 
edge they express have been discoveries of the 
senses and respond to ideals of the imagination ! 
Let the words be names of things that the pupils 
see and handle ; let the sentences be expressions 
of their own observation, thought, or imagination ; 
let the spelling and writing be acquired in the 
effort to record accurately their original discoveries 
or ideals, and for the purpose of communication for 
sympathy and help ; and the practice will be pleas- 
urable and successful, the whole threefold nature 
of the child will enter into the work, and the im- 
pressions stored up will be more permanent, as 
well as more quickly made. 

At the same time that these old-fashioned tools 
of thought and expression are kept in active oper- 
ation by the studies we have named, — reading, 
spelling, language, writing, — the study of number 
by concrete objects and combinations, by the solu- 
tion of problems of actual experience, by group- 
ing and classifying objects which can be handled 
and exchanged with each other, by experiments of 
counting singly or by recognized groups, or by 
processes which can be applied naturally at the 
suggestion of individual needs, must be carried 
forward also. Let number be practised by these 
means, and it is a most important tool in the 
equipment for mental activity and happy growth 



THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM 12/ 

of power and self-mastery. The ability to meet 
greater and greater resistances and overcome them 
is obtained from the study of number ; the reason- 
ing faculty is very much strengthened if the study 
is rightly applied, and the study of measurements 
is incidental and valuable as an additional furnish- 
ing to the range of mental growth. In this con- 
nection the practice with tools of measurement, — 
the rule, the plumb-line, the scale and balance, the 
measures of quantity, of form, of time, of direc- 
tion, of temperature, may all be studied and used 
in such a way as to give zest and actuality to all 
the work in number. The apparatus or mechani- 
cal tools used may be the rule of distance, — inch, 
foot, and yard measure; the gill, pint, quart, 
peck, bushel, gauges of quantity; the ounce, 
the pound, etc., gauges of weight ; the plumb-line, 
the compass, the divided circle, the try-square, the 
scissors, needle, and knife, the pendulum, the 
clock, the thermometer, the dial, the dividers ; 
all these tools are eagerly handled by the pupil, 
to give actuality to his number-work, and make a 
concrete presentation of his mathematical calcu- 
lations. How many of those who glibly recite 
the tables of measurement have any tangible con- 
ception of the facts they represent } How many 
know an acre of land approximately, or a ton of 
coal, or even a peck of meal, at sight } How many 
can recognize a square except as a drawing, or 



128 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

know how to make a circle or a hexagon ? A 
great deal of ciphering is done in schools of the 
old type which means absolutely nothing to the 
pupil ; it is simply a mass of figures combined 
according to arbitrary direction, and standing for 
no actual value in his experience. Now we pro- 
pose to connect every process with life. Let the 
child see and handle, measure and experiment, 
discover his process, make his rule, apply his 
knowledge, or gain it by his own powers of ob- 
serving and doing. In this way it enters into his 
mind-growth ; it becomes organic. 

These methods of learning give constant delight. 
How truly they accord with the natural impulses 
of the child, every mother will bear witness. The 
day has dawned when we condescend to learn 
methods of education from nature ; we no longer 
repress the natural energies ; we establish condi- 
tions of freedom rather than limitation. The kin- 
dergarten gives us the model, and as we have placed 
it at the foundation of our school-system, we must 
build upon it according to its ideals. It is learn- 
ing by observation and experiment ; it provides 
the child with material and tools, and encourages 
him to use them to construct, to design, to demon- 
strate, to embody his concepts. The old tools — 
the pen, the pencil, the book, and the map — may 
continue ; but he must use the pen to express his 
thought, the pencil to draw his ideal, the book to 



THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM 129 

complete his observation and give him practice in 
this tool of language, and the globe to vivify and 
express the shape and detail of the earth. He must 
make his own maps and define his knowledge of 
contour and relief by modelling in clay, by drawing 
in contour or elevation representations of the sur- 
face he makes in clay ; he must go out and study 
real forms of geography; he must pour water over 
his clay surface to discover the laws of drainage, 
to know and represent rivers, lakes, seas, gulfs, 
islands, peninsulas, capes, isthmus, and continent. 
If he studies history, let him represent its facts as 
far as possible. Does he study the early history of 
this country } let him construct miniature wig- 
wams, dress dolls as Indians, make little canoes, 
snow-shoes, set up an Indian village, and draw what 
he has not the material to construct ; let him make 
historical maps, tables of statistics, and learn to 
read the language of charts and constructive draw- 
insfs. Does this sound like overtaxins: the child .-^ 
Nature will deny the charge ; and experience, 
already reached in some schools, will gainsay you. 
The laboratory method in physics and chemistry, 
in astronomy, geology, botany, and biology, is now 
beyond challenge ; the learning by doing, estab- 
lished by Froebel, is also now beyond challenge ; 
thus the two extremes of our school-courses have 
settled the question. How long shall we delay their 
connection throughout the grades of school-work ? 



I30 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

The time has come, we believe, to unify and inter- 
relate all our work, both in subject and method ; 
and on this doctrine we have remodelled our course 
of study in the Boston schools as far as at present 
practicable. We have endeavored to adjust our 
means to our end, — the great end of all educa- 
tion, — the development of power, the determinate 
and symmetrical growth of the child-nature in all 
its relations to nature, to man, and to God. Begin- 
ning with the primary schools, we carry up the 
kindergarten plan in physical training, by free play 
as well as by systematic exercises, according to the 
Ling system given by a daily programme. We 
introduce observation-lessons on color, form, size, 
and qualities of objects related to and illustrated 
by kindergarten methods of manual training ; viz., 
clay-modelling, paper folding and cutting, sewing, 
stick-laying, and drawing ; these are all made to 
give observation in form and color with study of 
type-forms and of nature in plant and animal life. 
The observation of the parts of the human body, 
and simple directions as to dress and food, cleanli- 
ness and physical habits, is a part of this course. 

Design and color accompany all the exercises in 
form. Light cardboard constructive work for use 
or beauty, or for illustration of form or models of 
apparatus in physics, is named in the upper pri- 
mary grade, and in some of our schools simple 
slojd-work with the knife is allowed, and shown to 



THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM 131 

be practicable and educative as well as recreative. 
The drawing must express the meaning and be a 
statement of facts, as w^ll as graphic illustration of 
observed or imagined objects and processes, or 
of designs of symmetry based upon natural forms 
of beauty. Through all these exercises the child 
learns form, color, the elements of science and art, 
and constantly exercises his perceptive and crea- 
tive faculties. We connect all this work with lan- 
guage by accustoming the child to express himself 
in simple and correct forms of speech, in relating 
what he sees, describing what he does, recording 
his results, and reading his own and others' records, 
both printed and written. " The pupils must be 
so guided," says our printed manual, " as gradually 
to gain the power for themselves of making out 
the words of a sentence and getting its thought." 
We give the children varied and interesting books 
by good authors to use in the schoolroom. Would 
that all the job text-books and primers belonging 
to a past generation were abolished, and the child 
wholly set to learning to read by reading, and 
learning to write by writing, and learning to spell 
by spelling, where alone he ever needs to spell, in 
actual writing of his thought. We lead the child 
to right modes of expression and right enunciation 
and inflection in reading, not by rules and accents, 
but by calling upon his inspiration as he tells us 
the story and makes it real. 



132 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

Number in the primary school is wholly con- 
crete ; all sorts of objects furnished by the nature- 
study, by the form and color study, or by any 
material of play or work, may be utilized constantly 
for practice in number. The common apparatus 
or tools of measurement should be given to the 
child in connection with number and form ; he 
should learn by actual experiment the methods 
and standards of measuring form, quantity, weight, 
distance, direction, and time. He should learn 
parts of numbers by dividing whole objects, and by 
distributing shares of things ; he should learn 
United States money by playing trade and hand- 
ling a toy currency. In short, he should learn 
and have an actual appreciation of values and 
counting by the decimal system, of things weighed 
and measured, of standards and units as well as 
fractions for computation. Thus in the lowest 
primary class the course of study names "coins 
from one to ten cents, inclusive. Pint, quart, 
inch." In the next class, "coins continued, pint, 
quart, gallon, inch, foot, yard, peck, bushel, day, 
week, month, year ; " and in the highest class, 
" coins continued, quart, peck, bushel, inch, foot, 
yard, second, minute, hour, day, week, year, ounce, 
pound." Of course this means that the child shall 
actually handle and use this apparatus of measure, 
compute by actual experiment with the appropri- 
ate material in every kind of measure, and learn 



THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM 1 33 

all these applications of number by observation and 
experiment. 

So, in all the school-work thus far, have we 
aimed to actualize the knowledge gained ; to make 
learning a discovery by the child's natural activi- 
ties ; to connect the child with his environment, 
and prepare him for his growing relations. We 
have ordered a natural, healthy, and happy exercise 
of the physical, mental, and moral powers ; we have 
mortised the kindergarten more or less completely 
with the primary school ; we have made education 
for the little child a logical sequence of subject 
and method, and attempted an harmonious expan- 
sion and application of the natural methods of 
training the whole child. What have we done in 
the grammar-school course } 

We have set a well-organized and well-directed 
system of physical training in active operation for 
every day and for every grade. We have arranged 
a scheme of natural-science study by observation 
and experiment, which is progressive, harmoni- 
ous, and inclusive. The grammar-school course of 
study introduces this department by the following 
argument : — 

" The purpose and method of the grammar- 
school work in elementary science are largely 
coincident with the purpose and method of the 
observation lessons in the primary schools. The 
purpose is to train the senses and the intellect- 



134 ^-^^^ SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

ual faculties in their natural order of develop- 
ment ; to form scientific habits of study, and to 
acquire such knowledge as will incite to further 
and more systematic study of the natural sciences ; 
to build up the moral nature ; and to lay the foun- 
dation of a well-rounded and practical education. 
The method from first to last is observation, ex- 
periment, and induction, with some form of expres- 
sion — oral, graphic, or constructive — which shall 
complete and communicate the results of the 
work. 

"The right study of elementary science, at every 
stage of its progress, trains the mind by exercis- 
ing the faculties of analysis, comparison, judg- 
ment, and taste, as well as the other mental activi- 
ties. This study should nourish the moral nature 
by creating a habit of sympathy and communion 
with nature ; by arousing a love for beauty and 
symmetry of form, and by revealing the design 
and adaptation of structure in plant and animal 
life ; by instilling a tenderness for lower forms, 
and reverence for higher forms of being; by 
leading to a recognition of responsibility to law as 
manifested in natural phenomena, and of the 
power of habit as displayed in the structural 
growth of plant and animal life ; by applying the 
laws of physical growth to mental and moral 
growth ; by fostering an appreciation of the mu- 
tual helpfulness of all departments of nature and 



THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM 1 35 

an apprehension of the providence and fatherhood 
of the Creator as shown in the life of nature." 

The course includes a progressive line of physi- 
ology and hygiene, lessons on minerals, plants, 
animals, and phenomena of nature, and in physics 
as learned from observation and experiment. A 
note in the last year of the grammar-school course 
says, '' Pupils should observe and express the facts 
and make their own inferences. Thus a keen 
interest may be excited and the best of mental 
training secured ; a training in the practice of close 
observation, in careful thinking, and in accurate 
description." The course in elementary science is 
supplemented by a partial course in manual train- 
ing, introduced by the following statement : — 

'* The relation of Manual Training to the study 
of Elementary Science is intimate and essential. 
Moreover, the relation of both to other depart- 
ments of school-work — especially to language, 
geography, and drawing — is so close as to result 
in mutual helpfulness and in economy of time and 
effort. 

The exercises in manual training are a means 
not only of physical and intellectual, but also of 
moral culture. They train to habits of accuracy, 
neatness, order, and thoroughness ; they make 
a helpful occupation for otherwise unemployed 
time, or a relaxation from less pleasurable work ; 
they present an incentive to good work in all di- 



136 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

rections ; and offer at all times and in all connec- 
tions a moral stimulus and preparation for useful- 
ness at home and in the community." 

This course mentions sewing, light tool-work in 
wood or cardboard, clay-modelling, cookery, car- 
pentry, dress-draughting and cutting. Drawing 
is carried through every grade of the grammar 
school, under the general oversight of a special 
director, and includes model and object drawing, 
drawing from memory, design, historic ornament, 
free-hand, and instrumental drawing. The ele- 
mentary science lessons are still indicated as 
material for language work, oral and written ; 
the reading tends more and more to the literary 
motive ; geography and language are connected with 
the nature lessons at every stage, and history is 
used as material for reading and written exercises. 
Oral or written reproduction of reading matter is 
carried along all the way ; poems and gems of liter- 
ature are studied and memorized ; art is suggested 
as a subject of research ; and methods of research 
and illustration in geography and history are em- 
phasized as the grammar-school course proceeds. 
The dictionary, the encyclopaedia, the atlas, the 
chart, each becomes a tool in the hands of the 
pupil, and he must acquire facility in the use of 
each, and know how to reach and use all sources 
of information ; he learns to compare, to arrange, 
and to generalize, so as to acquire scientific habits 



THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM 1 37 

of study, and make himself master of his material 
as well as his tools ; he begins to perceive the con- 
nections of every branch of study ; he learns some- 
thing of the unity and harmony of the universe, 
and opens the avenue to his highest opportunity of 
inspiration. 

The study of geography is made very real, pro- 
gressive, inclusive, and widely related. It begins 
not, as once, with definitions and impossible concep- 
tions, but takes the child just where he is on God's 
earth, and bids him look around. Study of natural 
features by real geographical forms ; use of the 
compass ; drawing a plan of the school-house, of 
the vicinity ; modelling forms and surfaces ob- 
served, drawing of such forms ; making collec- 
tions of natural productions ; reading interesting 
geographical stories, travels, descriptions, pictures, 
oral and written accounts of places seen ; study of 
our own town, city, and country ; observation of 
movements of sun, moon, and stars, their rising 
and setting, heat of the sun's rays, length and 
direction of shadows, weather, wind, and seasons, 
sun's place at noon in different seasons ; study of 
physical and commercial geography in close rela- 
tion to study of minerals, plants, animals, and 
natural phenomena ; historic places described, the 
logical connection of geography and history made 
plain, stereoscopic views and photographs of geo- 
graphical and historical scenes, with constant read- 



138 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

ing and research ; these are our modern methods 
as laid down in our revised course of study. Civil 
government of our own country is the finishing 
touch to this course, and involves a constant and 
enlightening inculcation of patriotism. 

In arithmetic the concrete method is still pur- 
sued : the units of measurement are still studied 
experimentally, and fractions with concrete illustra- 
tion. Concrete problems, mensuration of solids, 
and practical book-keeping complete the arithmet- 
ical course. We have not yet made it what it 
should be. We should take practical geometry and 
some algebraic method into our number-work in 
the grammar schools, in the solution of problems 
too clumsily done by arithmetic, and as a more 
concrete presentation of mensuration of solids, and 
of square and cube root. Almost every logical 
teacher adopts these methods, and they should be 
laid down. 

But so far our revised course shows a clear 
escape from the old rote methods. We have incor- 
porated the live, active, and experimental methods, 
the constructive methods, the natural methods, 
the manual-training methods, and given freedom 
to the child in all his activities. Music is a part 
of his training, from first to last, and is not only a 
vocal and musical training, but, as at present 
administered, a very close and certain mental 
training. It is wonderful to find how the voice 



THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM 1 39 

obeys the mental image, and how exact the mental 
image of tone may become in a child. Our chil- 
dren graduate from the grammar school able to 
read and sing any music of common degree of dif- 
ficulty, any part in a part-song, or to transpose, 
either on paper or by voice, any plain air to any 
key, and to recognize and give at command any 
note in the scale. It is easy to see that we have 
struck out far away from the plan of committing 
to memory the words of a text-book as our only 
means of education ; we are in the beginning of 
a manual-training era, for manual training is a 
method of education, not a specialty of education. 
It treats the child in his relations, in his threefold 
unity ; it connects him directly with nature in his 
observation of nature ; it connects him with man 
in the relations of nature to human life, and in 
making him creative, and therefore helpful to 
humanity ; and in both these directions of activity 
and growth, through every step of his path amid 
the realms of nature and man, it connects him with 
God as the Creator and Father of Life, and as the 
constant inspiration of his conscious existence. 

In the high-school courses we have not yet 
attained, we have barely suggested, new lines of 
work. The Manual-Training High School for boys 
— to be called the Mechanic Arts High School — 
should be arranged for girls as well as boys, and 
have a course of domestic science and domestic 



I40 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

arts. There should be a greater number of elec- 
tive courses in the high schools, that greater indi- 
vidualization of education may be possible. There 
should be partial courses and greater elasticity 
in all courses as to time and direction of work. 
Art and literature should be more completely open 
as special courses. The zoological, botanical, and 
mineralogical laboratories should be much better 
equipped. A biological department should be 
placed in the high or normal school, and freer 
specialization instituted. Psychology should be 
studied in the high schools as well as in the nor- 
mal school. But the high schools will be the 
last to move, as they have been established so 
firmly on the old academic ideal. Some day the 
whole course of study in the public schools will 
look symmetrical ; one purpose shall prevail through 
all its grades, and its most noble feature will be the 
thorough interrelation of all its work. The con- 
stant building up of character, as the sum of all 
right activities, will, after all, be its supreme crown 
of achievement, and nature's verdict on the quality 
of our ideal. 



THE RELATION OF THE SCHOOL 
TO INDUSTRIAL REFORMS 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE SOCIAL SCIENCE CLUB 



The school is nearer to the problems of the day 
than any other institution, because it is forming 
the generation which continually confronts those 
problems, and must set itself to their solution. 
The school is all the time storing up and turning 
out the applied power of humanity. Brain-power, 
hand-power, — the coming man and woman, — 
these are the product of that daily workshop of 
the human being, the public school. The stored- 
up energy, the consolidated power and ever-evolv- 
ing dynamic force, which is to move the wheels of 
the future is generated in these school-houses that 
focus the humanity of our towns and cities. The 
schools have a more vital work to-day than in the 
past. We see the urgent need of a living con- 
nection between the growing child and the life 
about him. We no longer want mere bookworms 
coming out of our schools, but live boys and girls, 

141 



142 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

awake at every pore, — quick to see, quick to feel, 
quick to take hold of the great needs of life. 
They must know something ; not that it shall be 
hidden away for exclusive use, but that it shall 
be applied, that it shall help somebody. We 
want power to think and power to do ; power to 
organize and power to act under organization ; 
power to lead and power to follow ; for one is the 
complement of the other. " He that is greatest 
among you, let him be your servant." ''He that is 
faithful in that which is least is faithful also in 
much." In order to social success of any kind 
we must know how to go just where we are 
wanted, like the soldier in an army ; for although 
one man may not of himself be able to accom- 
plish an appreciable part of the work of the world, 
yet by adding his force and knowledge to some 
well-directed general effort, and willingly doing 
just what he can do, just where it is wanted, he 
may accomplish glorious things. 

So we must equip our children for concerted 
action, for participation in the activities of the 
day, for helpfulness in practical matters, for ready 
application of all they have gained in training or 
knowledge. Let them learn to work for each 
other as well as with each other. Establish in 
the schools the natural relation between demand 
and supply. Let the suburban classes contribute 
from their wealth of plants, flowers, and other 



INDUSTRIAL REFORMS 1 43 

objects of nature to the city classes who have no 
fields and gardens at their command ; let the city 
schools send products more easily within their 
reach to the country schools for their cabinets 
and museums. Let the boys in the school-shops 
make utensils for the girls in the school-kitchens ; 
let the workers at slojd make convenient objects 
for the use of the classes in number or drawing ; 
let the sewing-pupils make aprons and caps for the 
carpentry-pupils and for the cooking-pupils ; let 
the cookery-class sometimes prepare a lunch for 
the kindergarten, and let all dance and play to- 
gether as often as they may, for it is in our recre- 
ations as well as in our work that we unconsciously 
exchange our advantages and meet in fraternal 
union ; and in all these mutual activities we develop 
in the children 'the power to understand each other 
and educate them to social and political harmony. 
And in all this community of effort it is the 
manual work that brings the children closest to- 
gether as brothers and sisters, especially when 
every piece of work is done for a moral end, that 
of helpful association with others. So the chil- 
dren must be taught to love tangible work ; and 
what child does not } They must be apt in apply- 
ing their constructive and originative powers to 
the material around them. Connect the child with 
his material of activity as soon as possible ; let 
him know the nature, qualities, and uses of that 



144 ^-^^^ SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

with which he is to deal ; let him learn the use of 
common tools ; show him the secrets of matter, 
of force, of processes, and laws ; let him study 
science experimentally, and handle intelligently 
this earth-material ; try what he can do with it. 
Relate him to the industries which develop all the 
resources of our surroundings ; make him master 
of these and of his own active powers. No more 
laggards, no more loafers, no more slouching at 
the threshold of life. The student must investi- 
gate, reason, and execute; he must think, and 
communicate his thought ; his head and hands 
must work together to lead him to the conquest 
of his conditions. We make the child familiar 
with nature ; for all subjects of thought and life 
spring from that source, and all return to it. He 
must know about the soil, and about the products 
of the soil, the treasures beneath it, and their 
appliances for the progress of man. We give 
him tools, the key to all trades, and training in 
the methods of dealing with all material for the 
uses of society. He is to be a factor in the build- 
ing of society, in the shaping of all practical inter- 
ests in the life of the next generation. We must 
start him where he can choose his way, not by the 
old apprentice system which made him the victim 
of his parents' choice, the slave to a master, and 
to a single craft. Greater intelligence, larger 
choice, fuller freedom, the" times demand. We 



INDUSTRIAL REFORMS 145 

must be equipped for any journey, for every strug- 
gle, for all relations, if we would be neither idlers 
nor drudges, if we would be sure to be called out 
to achieve something. He who mixes brains with 
his work is always wanted and will always succeed. 
He who is as apt with hand as with head cannot 
be confined to one chance in life, for he has only 
to adapt his skill and apply his power to the 
chance that arrives. 

We are becoming a cosmopolitan people. God 
is sending all the world to us as pupils : every 
mountain and hill is brought low, and every valley 
exalted to prepare a highway for the nations. 
This great trust we must meet wisely and fear- 
lessly, feeling that all men are brothers. Let no 
one try to separate race from race, class from class, 
or worker from worker ; for all are workers together 
with God. Service is the only nobility among free- 
men : let all learn the elements of labor ; this 
alone will help in the social equality we look for ; 
but no equality can be attained while the worker 
is a mere drudge. You nor I can be contented to 
drudge : we want our work brought up to the level 
of an art or a beneficence ; we want it originative 
and helpful ; we want to respect ourselves for 
doing it, and respect ourselves in doing it. If we 
can all understand the conditions of the worker, we 
can be saved from many sources of friction and 
many social dangers. I blame my employee be- 



146 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

cause I cannot appreciate his difficulties : when 
my cook leaves me and I have to go into her place 
for a time I am disposed to regard her short-com- 
ings with greater indulgence ; I begin to wonder 
how she got along so well ; I learn to respect her 
skill, her patience, her management. When the 
rich man's son stands at the bench of the school- 
shop by the side of the poor man's son, they 
learn to measure each other's difficulties, try each 
other's tools, respect each other's power and skill. 
Judgment of work, analysis of plan of work, criti- 
cal comparison of results, are proved to be as 
arduous as the mere execution of detail. The 
survival of the fittest becomes the law : the chief 
must rise from the ranks ; the head must be 
reached through the hands in a double sense ; one 
must know the whole by experience : this will 
make society more just, considerate, and forbear- 
ing either way ; it will dignify labor and establish 
human brotherhood. Genius comes from all races 
and all classes, and usually manifests itself through 
contact with the material upon which it spends its 
power. The mere theorist will not be able to con- 
vert dead matter into active force ; the inventor 
has handled and worked with the stuff he glorifies 
into wondrous achievement. 

We want to better the conditions of our lives ; 
we are all anxious to rise to higher planes of 
thought, feeling, and action ; none of us wishes 



INDUSTRIAL REFORMS 1 47 

to remain a clod and a dullard ; we women want 
to understand what we have to do in the home, 
and do it from not only high moral and affectional 
inspiration, but in the glow of applied science, of 
skilled artisanship, of originative power. We 
must understand the physical laws which regulate 
all our apparatus of living, — laws of heat, of light, 
of motion ; we must see through the problems 
upon which our health and safety depend in the 
home, — problems of ventilation, of drainage, of 
sanitation, of applied chemistry in all departments 
of domestic science; we shall enjoy the experi- 
ments in the laboratory of the kitchen, in the 
artistic decorations of our homes, and the hygienic 
appointments of our tables and our clothing, and 
lift ourselves above being mere servants of the 
household into the plane of educators and artists 
of home life. We shall love our own no less fondly 
when we work for them intelligently, and be none 
the less true economists for the family because we 
can keep accounts and know our legal rights ; we 
can even present nobler sons and daughters to the 
commonwealth when we have studied the prob- 
lems of life actually and from tangible experiment, 
and we shall be able to contribute to the adjust- 
ment of social difficulties all the better for having 
studied political economy with you our comrades 
of the other sex at the ballot-box. Believe me, 
all our present efforts at industrial education are 



148 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

in the interest of homes that shall save men from 
vice, society from disorder, and the laborer from 
despair. The knowing of some trade, aptness 
at some handwork, the ability to support one's self, 
to do something well, is a great preventive of 
crime. Who can point to a skilled mechanic of 
good habits of life and of available health whose 
family are beggars.'^ The criminals know how to 
do nothing certainly and systematically ; but indi- 
vidual independence and mutual helpfulness are 
the fruit of trained hands and clear heads. 

The schools are now working for better regu- 
lated lives and more beneficent social institutions : 
the fireside rather than the saloon, skilled labor 
and shorter hours of work, intelligent and happy 
recreation ; science and skill mean leisure and 
self-improvement ; good character is the result of 
the healthy activity of body, mind, and soul, and 
places man or woman beyond defeat, making them 
true republicans. 

Systematic labor, work for a purpose, not merely 
mechanical, but scientific in its methods, that is 
the aim of the free education we mean to bring 
into the schools. 



WOMAN'S WORK IN EDUCATION 



ADDRESS AT THE NATIONAL TEACHERS' CON- 
VENTION 



Woman's work in education is distinctive ; it 
differs in kind from that of man. The element 
of sex enters into the constitution of mind, and 
determines the sphere and quality of intellectual 
activity. According to the principle of the con- 
tinuity^ of law, the mental and moral nature is 
conditioned by sex : this gives limitations, but it 
also gives expansions. We have been too apt to 
look at the limitations. We have spoken of what 
the mind of woman lacks of the mental qualities 
of man, rather than what it supplies to man's 
mind: for one is the complement of the other; 
one is set over against the other as parallel, recip- 
rocal, reactionary, and completing. 

Women are naturally and properly offended by 
a crude, low, and physical statement of the limi- 
tations of sex ; the outlines of their physical be- 
ing are typical, however, and indicate the plan of 

149 



150 TFiE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

the threefold organism. The mind and soul of 
woman are as strongly and thoroughly conditioned 
by sex as the body. Science has as yet scarcely 
touched the question of the mental and moral dif- 
ference of sex. I offer a slight contribution to 
the analysis of that difference, and to its indica- 
tions as to the nature of woman's educational 
work. 

Let us inquire into the history of the race in 
this respect, for race-history is but the expansion 
of the history of the individual : each man is an 
epitome of the race, each woman is represented 
by the woman of history. Nature (not man, not 
society, not environment, not tradition) has fixed 
the lines of woman's development, and moulded 
the history of her achievement. 

Woman has been the inspirer, not the fulfiller, 
of man's work. She has aroused the fervor of 
thought and feeling which has drawn out his 
powers to execution. Woman has been the im- 
aginative, the ideal side of the race. Her beauty, 
her sympathy, her ideality, her faith, have nerved 
man to heroic action and to artistic expression. 
For Helen was the long Trojan battle waged ; for 
feminine ideals — for Venus and Psyche and 
Juno — have the pencil and the brush portrayed 
beauty ; for Beatrice has Dante sung ; and every 
poet has been kindled to his divinest verse by 
the goddess at whose shrine he worshipped, his 



WOMAN'S WORK IN EDUCATION 151 

one adored, beloved among women. As the phys- 
ical beauty and grace of woman have drawn man 
to her feet, so her grace of thought, her beauty of 
spirit, have inspired his noblest efforts ; and home, 
the temple in which she ministers, has been the 
lode-star of his pilgrimage. He has felt the har- 
mony of her being until it filtered through his 
brain-cells into a symphony of sweet chords, and 
expressed itself through his fingers on the many- 
strin2:ed or silver-throated instrument of music. 
Woman looks into the mystical unseen, and per- 
ceives its meaning and its reality; and as she com- 
municates to man this holy faith, he gives it tan- 
gible shape, and puts it into word or tone or color 
for the world to admire. She absorbs beauty and 
truth, he struggles to set it forth ; she is the 
dreamer, he the worker. She is provided with the 
sensitive, he with the muscular tissue. 

There are two sorts of intellectual and moral 
function ; viz., that of immediate and tangible 
expression, and that of structural and organic in- 
building. Both these functions are common to 
the sexes ; but the first is the supreme function of 
man, the second the supreme function of woman. 
The greatest men and women are not only 
stronger in their distinctive functions, but more 
fully equipped on both sides. The strong man is 
compact of manly traits, but the completest man 
has also a touch of the womanly. The perfect 



152 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

woman is not only the most womanly of creatures, 
but has also a deep reserve of native courage and 
strength. The merely feminine man and the 
merely masculine woman are abnormal and unin- 
teresting, if not repulsive. If woman has failed 
as man's competitor, it is because she has made 
the mistake of trying to assume functions as 
supreme which nature has not made supreme in 
her, and in trying to subordinate functions which 
nature intended should beMominant : we speak of 
intellectual functions. The exercise of man's 
supreme energy of mind produces concrete works 
of art, science, and literature. The exercise of 
woman's supreme energy of thought and feeling 
produces cell, nerve, and fibre of mind and soul : 
the latter is the transmissible capital of intellect- 
ual and moral power ; it does not seek to expend, 
but to conserve itself. What is wholly spent is 
exhausted : it is largely the unexpresssed genius 
of one generation that is carried over to the next. 
It is the repressed energies of the father that are 
worked out in the son. The poet utters in verse 
what his son puts upon the canvas ; the artist 
bequeaths his imagination to be expressed in the 
musician's language of harmonious sound. The 
man of action sees his boy burning the midnight 
oil over his books, and the mathematician of one 
generation becomes the scientist of the next. 
This does not contradict the law of growth by 



WOMAiV'S WORK IN EDUCATION I 53 

exercise. The inward faculty gains strength 
and determinate tendency, but seeks new chan- 
nels of activity, new outlets of expression. It is 
not without design that woman's mind and soul 
are framed for unconscious and organic activity 
rather than for exhaustive expression ; the rich 
juices of her being are stored up rather than 
spent, and become resources for the fulness of 
her inspirational office. The significance of this 
fact is in its indication of woman's vocation. 

Do we complain of nature t Is it less honora- 
ble to conserve for larger uses than to expend 
in more obvious expression } Nature has held 
woman back from direct accomplishment which is 
equal or superior to man's in science, literature, 
and art, as in mechanical realms, because it or- 
dained her for indirect agency in those realms. 
Woman has not represented herself by a Newton, 
a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a Beethoven, a Raphael ; 
but she has, by unnoted processes, concentrated 
the race-activities for transmission and vitalization ; 
expressed herself more by an atmosphere, an in- 
fluence, a sympathy, and a diffusive grace of cul- 
ture, than by any specific acts ; she has created 
the sense for beauty and harmony which man 
applies to outward form, and has kept alive the 
Promethean fires of humanity by the operation 
of her structural determination of mind-function. 
This power and sex-faculty does not win the 



154 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

instant applause of the unthinking world, but is as 
worthy as, and more enduring than, that which does : 
it pushes the race upward and onward ; it draws 
man to his evolving destiny ; it pervades and 
exalts humanity. This structural determination 
of woman's mind gives her quicker intuition than 
man. A woman reaches by intuition at once 
what a man's mind slowly attains by reason and 
experience. She has the result of experience 
stored up in her brain-cells, and they present it 
automatically as the fingers of the musician 
instantly strike the notes which are painfully 
wrought out by the tyro. This intuitional facility 
has been counted a lower stage of mentality by 
many ; but is it not the result of thoroughly or- 
ganized thought, — thought, or inherited organic 
structure, so long habituated to the mind as to 
have become automatic, unconscious, organic } 
Processes are lost sight of, axioms take the place 
of conscious deduction ; it is the sum of race- 
thinking and race-knowledge ; it is knowledge and 
thought packed into brain and mind power. Axi- 
oms and intuitive truths mark the tide-line of 
human advance ; they show us where the steady 
inroad of human ideas has graved the sands of 
time. This intuitional quality of woman's mind 
makes her work distinctive in kind. Let her work 
by faith in it, not in distrust of it : she cannot do 
her best work in the line of man's best work ; her 



WOMA.V'S WORK IN EDUCATION I 55 

rights and privileges, her expansions as well as 
her limitations, she must accept from nature ; she 
must hold her position, not as inferior to her 
choice, but up to the full measure of human oppor- 
tunity and endowment ; she must throw herself 
into sympathy with its purpose and methods, not 
struggle against them, if she would avail herself 
of all its power ; then she will dignify it and be 
dignified by it. 

But although the most obvious end of this 
difference of sex in mind relates to heredity, yet 
as a direct educational force it is constantly 
operative ; it does not preclude acts of specific 
effort at constructive or creative expression of 
form or other language. Woman is by no means 
destitute of the faculty of immediate expression, 
or ability to work intellectually as man works. 
The sex boasts more and more its sculptors, 
dramatists, poets, painters, and musicians, and 
even makes itself felt in the professions formerly 
regarded as exclusively man's. She must, indeed, 
work out in the laboratory of modern psychology 
much that is to surprise even herself, and confront 
men with new championships ; but all this will 
discount her grand results if it be not alchemized 
by the distinctive assimilation of sex, and added 
to her charm and power as woman. The femi- 
nine element must still be paramount, and absorb 
to itself the wealth of new channels of thought, 



156 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

new germs of knowledge. The womanly bent of 
mind applied to education fits one for that kind of 
work which we may call ^ttirture. 

Plato set forth nurture as the highest form of 
education : it is the unfolding of the whole nature 
by the subtle persuasiveness of a personal atmos- 
phere ; the unconscious influence of culture and 
character ; the crystallizing forces of the inclusive 
being ; the harmony which flows from personality 
and envelops the subject of educative effort 
until the mind and soul grow as flowers bloom in 
the sunlight and air. In this sphere of intuitional 
activity are born the ideals of true education. It 
is the stream of a large and exalted vitality poured 
into the veins of the learner, and its value is 
immeasurable. It makes all difference to the 
pupil what the teacher is, how related to divine 
and infinite realities, how free a medium for truth 
and beauty and inspiration. It is the woman, not 
the method or even the philosophy, which educates, 
which creates, which holds the balance of destiny. 
Paths of knowledge may be explored ; culture must 
become perfect by aggregation as well as by 
growth : the teacher may learn and teach specifi- 
cally ; but above and through all must work her 
educational power as a woman, that with which 
her quality of mind has endowed her, the uncon- 
scious, the intuitional, the harmonizing power of 
nurture ; this alone makes her work the shapely, 
rounded, perfect pattern it is meant to be. 



WOMAA-'S WORK IN EDUCATION I 57 

Directly in the channel of all this determination 
of sex is the finer moral sense, nicer perception, 
and keener sensitiveness of soul in woman than in 
man. This is universally acknowledged as charac- 
teristic of her sex, and makes her the guide and 
comforter of man. Woman also has an accumu- 
lative energy, a dynamic power of conservation, 
which prepares her for continuous strain of suffer- 
ing, effort, or sympathy ; which gives her faith and 
patience and endurance beyond the power of man, 
and helps her to do without the vulgar plaudit. 
It is she who sustains and comforts the dying, 
who leads gently through the dark valley those in 
whose life she lives, who is "first at the cross and 
earliest at the grave," because of this accumulative 
tendency of her forces, this closer contact with 
eternal reserves of strength, this unconscious, 
unselfish absorption in the helpful activities of her 
nature. She can better do without the audible, 
the sudden and tangible reward, and wait for the 
harvest of a larger sowing ; for her nature tides 
over the constant interruptions of time and phys- 
ical needs by the flooding waves of her abounding 
spiritual motive-power. 

To this end is woman so closely connected with 
the next generation, that nurture may be complete. 
Her work in education begins with the breath of 
life, is unintermittent and affectional, inspired by 
the very essence of her nature as woman ; it is so 



158 TIIK SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

truly and thoroughly inspired that it amounts to a 
revelation ; its instinctive methods are the gospel 
of education. The greatest genius of modern edu- 
cational science acknowledged this, and made the 
nursery his university. Froebel sat down at the 
mother's feet and tried to write the alphabet of 
educational science. Let woman trust her intui- 
tions as Froebel trusted them, and work in the 
glory of her instinctive functions, to surround man 
from the cradle to the grave with the harmony, 
the purity, the sweetness, and the grace which 
nature made so much more accessible to h.er than 
to man, and she will fill her place as an educator. 
Let her never foro:et that her work means sound- 
ness and completeness, not disproportion and one- 
sidedness. She may instruct in a department of sci- 
ence, and do it well, but more largelyby virtue of 
her sex is she to develop the whole being of her 
pupils harmoniously, to nurture both mind and 
soul, and though it may be unconsciously, yet if she 
be a true woman it is inevitably ; this is what God 
is doing through her, even while she in her own 
proper self attempts mere teaching. Character, 
taste, thought, feeling, all these are being wrought 
out by her intrinsic personality through any rela- 
tion which her specific connections establish for 
her ; that these may be wrought out purely to a 
noble pattern, she must have built up in herself 
that noble pattern ; the structural propensity of her 



WOMAA^'S WORK IN EDUCATION' I 59 

nature must furnish in herself the source of that 
wonder-working atmosphere, that ethereal and mag- 
netic influence which transmutes all it touches. 
This penetrating influence will reach to the inward 
life of every subject of its educative activity ; it 
feels its way into homes, into hearts, into springs 
of life, to be redistributed. It is the harmonizing 
power in the development of the race ; it works 
unobservedly, and, all of a sudden, the wide earth is 
conscious of its great results. 

The soul of woman is conditioned by sexto finer 
methods of conduct, to more responsive sympa- 
thies, both human and divine, than is man's soul. 
What a force this gives her as an educator ! 
Nothing crude or mechanical is worthy of woman 
as means or methods of education. Woman's 
work in education is so fine, so high, so loving, as 
to redeem each generation if it were accepted and 
occupied by woman. Woman may be profession- 
ally a teacher of sewing, of music, of history, or of 
mathematics ; but essentially she is a teacher of 
all that she is or can communicate through this 
unconscious miracle of influence, of nurture, — intel- 
lectual and moral. If she should assume this, her 
natural function as an educator, and address herself 
to the highest and most harmonious development 
of human nature, how far-reaching and free would 
be her power ! 

Woman must take herself, her whole consecrated 



l6o THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

self, into her work of teaching, more largely and 
distinctively of nurturing the growing generation, 
through the influence of her personal culture, and 
the magnetic forces of her intellectual and spirit- 
ual intuition, conserved as nature designed, not 
spent in exhaustive competition with man for pur- 
poses of selfish ambition. Something larger and 
finer than deeds, more penetrating and compelling 
than tangible acts, — the ever-expanding and all- 
pervading aroma of life and soul will beautify her 
educative effort and glorify mankind. As Goethe 
says : — 

" The unspeakable will be accomplished. 
The eternal womanly leading man ever onward and upward." 



THE UTILITY OF THE IDEAL IN 
EDUCATION 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE WOMAN'S EDUCATIONAL 
AND INDUSTRIAL UNION 



This is a practical age. One of the first ques- 
tions we ask in regard to any proposed scheme of 
action or thought is, Of what use is it ? We have 
come to regard utility as the only excuse for being ; 
and not utility in a very high, or broad, or far-see- 
ing sense, but in rather an external, transient, 
and materialistic sense, — the immediate and me- 
chanical view of things as useful or nor use- 
ful. Does this course furnish bread and butter.-* 
Does it mean money t Will it diffuse the neces- 
saries of physical sustenance } These are very 
important aspects of utility, and concern us to a 
very wide extent as we meet the problem of life 
face to face. Especially in a work of beneficence 
for the mass of humanity, we are compelled to 
emphasize this phase of utility, at least, before we 
attempt a larger interpretation. The exigencies 

i6i 



1 62 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

of the destitute and the ignorant seem to He in 
that plane : we must help them to the means of 
obtaining food, clothing, shelter, and warmth. 
But even for this class the idea of utility has a 
much deeper and fuller significance. Is not the 
life more than meat and the body than raiment ? 
Life is by the poorest felt to include feeling, 
knowledge, and progress in the scale of being. 

We find ourselves in the midst of an era of 
material and physical development, and we are led 
to form the notion of physical and material supply 
as the sinnminn boniini for all mankind. To train 
the muscles to perfect manipulation, to lay the 
foundation of industries, to prepare the child for 
successful trade, and to occupy him physically, is 
the educational ultimatum of to-day. Let him 
learn so much of reading and writing and arith- 
metic as will enable him to elbow his way through 
the world ; let him study so as to provide himself 
with what he needs for a liv^elihood ; let him 
understand that honesty is the best policy, and, if 
he may be made so fashionable as to catch such 
unworthy notions of morality, that the virtues are 
on the whole worth acquiring as a safe and useful 
accomplishment, — and he has started on the 
course which will give him at least a chance in the 
** survival of the fittest," so far as this world is 
concerned. 

Now, have we done the best we can for the race 



UTILITY OF THE IDEAL IN EDUCATION 1 63 

when Wvi have thus blotted out the ideals of life, 
and have reduced all activities to one mechanical 
level ? We have taken out of our educational 
philosophy all that is inspirational ; we are reduced 
to the plain facts, to the practically useful in every 
branch of study. We study arithmetic only with 
an eye to successful trading, to accurate counting. 
We take up geography only to memorize its statis- 
tics, to have the facts of political boundaries clear, 
the census correct, the groundwork of commercial 
geography ready on which to build our future 
wealth in safety. It is the " Gradgrind " system to 
which we gravitate, and it leads us into a barren 
and arid country where all that is best and most 
human starves and dies. 

Now, in every study and work there is material 
for finer issues. To go beneath the surface, to 
see the causes and relations of things, to see the 
design and harmony of nature, to follow the thread 
of structure and development, to feel back and 
think back from the surface-fact, and forward from 
the mysterious spring of power and creative thought, 
into all its manifestations of nature and of human 
life and art, — this vivifies the whole realm of study, 
and we are born again into the world of the ideal ; 
we breathe a freer air and gain a broader outlook ; 
all our faculties awaken to an ever-evolving oppor- 
tunity and growth of activity. The imagination 
is ennobled by the preservation of the ideal, and 



164 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

enters into every mental effort. The student, 
trained to search out the meaning and the plan, to 
discover the purpose and method of every class of 
facts presented to his comprehension, will add 
something to the worth of those facts, will enlarge 
and exalt the boundaries of what he deals with, 
and build up the science in which his thought has 
found stimulus and satisfaction, as well as the art 
where his inquiry for the ideal has preserved and 
strengthened his originative power. On the other 
hand, the acquisition of the bare, isolated, and 
external fact, the mechanical aggregation of dead 
material, will block the way of the scholar ; will 
stultify and degrade the mental powers, and impov- 
erish all the essential realities for him forever ; 
because it is the opposite of education or leading 
out, it sJiiits in, narrows, and hardens the powers 
and processes of the mind ; it makes a parrot or a 
machine of the child born to seek, to know, and 
to orio:inate. One of the most difBcult of educa- 
tional propositions is that which undertakes to con- 
vince men of the supreme reality of what is not 
apparent to the senses ; to show them that the 
unseen is more real and essential than the seen ; 
that the things perceived by the outward eye and 
ear are merely transient and external, and that 
they are useful only as they build up and sustain 
the unseen and lead to eternal verities. One of 
the most difficult of undertakings is to convince 



UTILITY OF THE IDEAL IN EDUCATION 165 

people that what they see and handle is not so real 
as what is not perceived by the senses. We see 
experiments in physics, and the subject seems to 
us exhausted ; gravitation and vibration seem to 
have no meaning beyond weight and momentum ; 
but do not be content with this meagre and 
superficial idea of those forces ; the presentation 
is only the hint of the active power, a symbol, 
a suggestion, of the great reality. In fact, those 
forces are behind and within all the universe ; 
no eye can see them, — if we reach to heaven 
we do not compass them : the things they control, 
the medium through which they express them- 
selves, will perish, become changed and disinte- 
grated ; but the forces themselves — how inde- 
structible and unvarying ! It is our great privilege 
as human beings that we can discern their imma- 
nence and their permanence. 

We feel a new reverence for the powers God 
has given to man as we see human thought run 
forward to meet the divine thought. Kepler, fol- 
lowing out his mathematical logic, discovered the 
laws of motion for the planets before astronomical 
science was able to demonstrate them, until his 
third law was at last established by observation. 
Darwin felt his way along an untrodden path to meet 
the footsteps of the Creator, and was able to point 
out the progressive development of organic life and 
reveal a new truth to humanity. He who cannot 



1 66 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

trust his intellectual strength so far as to think 
the thoughts of God clearly, can yet become so 
quick to respond to a spiritual union with the Crea- 
tive Spirit as to feel his presence in the beauty of 
earth, sea, and sky, or in the laws which are 
already revealed ; and this spiritual recognition is a 
boundless inspiration. Everything we have to 
study in such a sympathy we shall approach with 
ardor ; we touch the inside, not the outside of 
nature, while we are conscious of its indwelling 
' spirit. If we go through the days and years of 
life without looking or feeling below its material, 
its round of pleasure or of work, we are meeting 
it as a mere animal. Are we busy } so is the bee ; 
are we industrious and patient t so is the ant, and 
both perhaps to a greater degree than ourselves ; 
do we investigate the outward material of things } 
so does the beast ; he uses his senses and physical 
means of knowledge as well as, perhaps better than, 
we. If we would be more than the brute, we must 
see somethins: more than the external form : we 
must see that of which the material is only the 
medium of expression to man ; that which arouses 
in the mind, thought, in the heart, sympathy, in 
the soul, aspiration. The inward eye must be 
open to discern the reality and strive for it more 
and more. 

And in all this striving which follows the clear 
perception of the truth, the process of develop- 



UTILITY OF THE IDEAL IN EDUCATION 1 6/ 

ment proceeds ; human growth is a succession of 
conquests in the struggle toward the ideal. There 
is no advance for him who rests in the outward 
and does not look beyond the immediate and tan- 
gible. He is imprisoned hopelessly in the cell 
of physical life who does not look out with a yearn- 
ing for freedom and longing to escape, which grows 
into a determination and effort to burst the prison 
bars ; so from desire are born struggle and hope ; so 
out of suffering, achievement and the enfranchise- 
ment of power ; so the waves and billows are sur- 
mounted and the shore is won ; so the whole earth 
groaning and travailing, ushers forth the soul of 
man on its sublime pilgrimage. Evolution is the 
constant method, not a painless, not a stolid change 
from low to high, from small to great, but a burst- 
ing of the fetters, a pressing against our environ- 
ment, a stretching of our inborn capacities, a 
strong reaching forward, breaking down every 
stronghold, throwing open door after door which 
shuts in the growing, longing, and conquering 
spirit, till with throe after throe we are brought for- 
ward into larger places, onto higher standpoints 
and into nobler spheres of life and activity. 

The brown beetle scrambles about the muddy 
floor of the stagnant pool; and not until he strug- 
gles upward, as if to reach some fair image of 
what he might be, does he become a winged crea- 
ture formed to dart through the summer air. 



1 68 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

The chrysalid with rapture stirs ; 
The water beetle feels more nigh 
His glory of the dragon-fly. 

The whole creation is lifting up its myriad hands for 
something of which it dreams, and which through 
struggle it may reach at last. We can imagine, 
even, that some spirit moves in the solid rock to 
crystallize and idealize it : the ruby and the diamond 
attest the glorifying power of an ideal. So a noble 
ideal acts upon the most heavy and inelastic tem- 
perament and transforms it at last. Education 
must start with ideals ; into every external and out- 
ward form it must breathe an inward significance 
which alone gives value to that outward form. 

It is high time that educators should recognize, 
in every direction and detail of their work, that all 
that is worth reaching is the outcome of what is 
immaterial, the expression of the hidden, a growth 
from within outwards, and not an arbitrary form 
to be adopted by conventional methods, the fossil 
of some dead thought, the mere rubbish of the 
schools, the technicalities of the schoolmaster. 

Bring back the brave ideals of truth, purity, 
beauty, and love. Let them enter into the earliest 
development of the little child. Build up in his 
soul-perceptions a personality which represents his 
intuitions of goodness, love, and power, and which 
embodies his ideals. Let the idea and the appre- 
hension of God be the beginning of his knowledge 



UTILITY OF THE IDEAL IN EDUCATION 1 69 

and wisdom. With what a progressive ideaHty 
have you thus endowed him as he stands at the 
threshold of his immortal career of knowledge, 
growing from more to more, '' till mind and soul 
according well shall make one music!" Indeed, 
everything we know must have its image in our 
minds. We see what corresponds to the image we 
have formed in the brain. Even when we are 
simply looking we see what we expect to see, or 
what we hope to see. If we go out into the woods 
for anemones we see anemones, the egg-hunter 
sees birds' nests ; the fisherman observes when the 
day is good for fishing, the housewife when it is 
good for drying clothes. Walking with a group 
of children one soon finds what their several tastes 
and enjoyments, their studies (if you please), are, 
by what they see and hear and find. The obser- 
vation which responds to some wish of the heart, 
some image of the thought, is the real study, the 
only study that ever informs the world, the only 
kind of study worth having. Let a man, then, go 
out into the fields and woods or among people, to 
his work or study or recreation, with the right 
image in his mind. 

The ideal is the all-important thing to start upon : 
the image in the mind, the wish in the heart, the 
love and hope we carry in the soul, is what will 
shape the life ; it selects everything for us and 
feeds us with its own nourishment ; we grow more 



I/O THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

and more into a pattern of this image from day to 
day. All knowledge will fall into the magnetic 
lines of that ideal. Do we think of nature's beauty, 
of her variety of form, of her secrets, and of her 
mysteries } They will all unlock themselves to us 
and let us in. The naturalist, the scientist, is 
studying his subject, not from books and teachers 
only, and at given times, but constantly from every 
source of illumination. His ideal secretes from all 
phenomena that surround it and are brought into 
connection with it, material for building itself 
strongly into a foundation for other ideals ; just as 
the coral polyp secreting its rocky elements from 
the sea establishes a footing and a basis on which 
others may also build many a glorious structure 
undreamed of by the coral. Such an ideal in- 
cludes a grand ambition too. Agassiz wrote to 
his mother when he was ten years old, '' I mean to 
become the first naturalist of my age ; " and he was. 
Great ideals cherished in the heart grow into a 
hope and a controlling determination to achieve 
them. The facts we learn, the rules we try to 
follow, the processes we go through, are all outside 
matters ; but the inspiration is a spring at the 
root of all activities, and builds up within us intel- 
lectual power for every effort, love for all learning, 
and the character and individuality which is our- 
selves eternally. Whatever our ideals, they w411 
make us grow into their image sooner or later. 



UTILITY OF THE IDEAL IN EDUCATION 171 

The day will come when we might as well have 
them all printed on our foreheads, they will be so 
plain there. The ideal is the pattern we are being 
formed by and fitted to, just as if it were kid upon 
our lives, and Fate with her shears stood by trim- 
ming and paring the beautiful fabric of being to fit 
it more and more exactly and unalterably to that 
pattern, be it good or bad, noble or base, generous 
or mean, earthly or heavenly. So, in a smaller 
way, do we stand beside our work, be it ever so 
small, with the pattern in mind by which that 
work must be shaped, if it is to be worth anything. 
Even a good game needs a plan or pattern well 
adjusted, well regulated. One cannot do anything 
well without a clear notion to start with of what 
he is to do, and how and why he is to do it. Hel- 
ter-skelter methods accomplish nothing : we must 
get a very complete and vivid ideal to begin with. 
This grows in the mind by keeping it there, just as 
a seed grows and swells by being in the damp 
earth ; it gains in clearness and distinctness of 
outline ; it brightens and looms up in glowing pro- 
portions, until we can use it for a pattern in all 
the detail of work. Man can do things he never 
would have dreamed possible without it. There it 
stands, all illuminated with the fervor of interest 
and expectation, as if it had a compelling radiance 
within itself, and shone with an almost creative 
light : he must obey its unceasing suggestions ; and 



172 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

every blossoming power of life will open only to 
adorn it. What is every form of being, every type 
of life, every structure and organism, but an ex- 
pression, a way, a medium, through which we 
strive to reach the great Ideal of eternal thought 
and love, of power and beauty, and through which 
it ever strives to reach us ? 

The poet, the seer, and the little child can see 
and hear and feel the divine in every clod and in 
every flower, in every form of nature, and in every 
sentiment and relationship of the soul. How 
beautiful and illuminating is the fact that the child 
is a natural poet or seer, and takes by instinct what 
otherwise it could never grasp in childhood! 
"Heaven lies about us in our infancy, and trailing 
clouds of glory " come the generations of childhood 
into our reverent hands. Yes, the child, like the 
poet, sees God in all, the spiritual within the natu- 
ral : out of this insight alone comes the full com^ 
prehension of outward forms, presented one after 
another to our attention and investigation, to our 
experiment and discovery ; then will proceed in 
right order knowledge and use, first that which is 
natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual, — 
the essential involved in and informing the super- 
ficial, and the superficial will prove as nothing 
without such indwelling. Out of this insight and 
sympathy with nature grow certain knowledge, 
living interest, love of learning. Not the shadow. 



UTILITY OF THE IDEAL IN EDUCATIOmY 1 73 

but the substance, of knowledge is thus at work on 
the imagination of the child, to give him ideals 
which rest in the mind as fertile germs ; ever 
growing, ever expanding into more inclusive types, 
ever ready for application to more and more varied 
forms, ever ready for expression in more and more 
varied material. How belittling is the system of 
thrusting form before essence, of teaching empty 
words, of cultivating physical aptness in handling 
and moulding material, while neglecting the build- 
ing up of those ideals for whose expression all this 
mechanical facility is alone worth anything. " Let 
us do everything," says Bacon, ** by inward neces- 
sity." An ape can busy himself with the outside 
or the inside of a material object : he can see, hear, 
smell, taste, or feel it, as well as the man, but his 
want of ideality is his brutish limitation. If utili- 
tarian effort aims at nothing higher than this out- 
ward impression and outward use, as if man were 
but a brute, to be trained to complete command of 
the senses for the objects of brute life simply, only 
to protect and perpetuate the physical life of him- 
self and his offspring, is it not depraving and degen- 
erating in its ends } 

Ah ! stop indeed to discriminate at this point in 
our schemes of industrial education. We are deal- 
ing not with brutish beasts, but with the human 
intelligence, for which the ideal element is insepa- 
rable from material facts. An immortal being must 



1/4 ^^^ SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

be fed with spiritual nourishment if he would grow ; 
that alone builds the man, — the occupation of his 
soul as well as his body ; the activity of the soul 
must inhere in all his physical activities and inspire 
them ; let every work of his hands be instinct with 
spirit and love. "There is everywhere in nature 
and science a voice audible to human ears, and a 
speech intelligible to human understanding," even to 
the child, — nay, to him more than others, — which 
is not possible of apprehension to the brute : it is the 
truth, the beauty, the logic, the faith, which under- 
lies all material phenomena, — the perception of the 
immaterial. The possibility of conceiving ideals 
vibrates in every human soul, even the emptiest 
and the dullest : it is the response God has placed 
there to his infinite beauty, to his eternal truth, 
to his divine love ; and it always stimulates and 
represents the effort after His inexhaustible 
knowledge. 

Here let us start as with an axiom : the child is 
not to be trained as the brute is trained, neither 
by the same methods nor to the same ends. The 
divine image — that point of differentiation be- 
tween man and brute — is photographed upon the 
soul of every child born into the world, and will 
be naturally reflected to his mind from all the 
works of creation. Professor Peirce says, "We 
have reason to believe that there is no human 
thought capable of physical manifestation and 



UTILITY OF THE IDEAL IN EDUCATION 1 75 

consistent with the stability of the material world 
which cannot be found incarnated in nature." 
Oh, sublime and inspiring incentive to the teacher, 
to hold close to the child in his advancing path 
that cloud of glory with which he comes to meet 
the glory of the Lord in created things ! As when 
the mother watches the face of her child as he 
begins to recognize his own ideals in the new 
forms presented to his advancing knowledge, she 
throws away her hoard of maxims and asks only 
not to hinder or cloud his way, not to efface one 
impulse of childish trust in unseen realities, but 
only to go on with him to claim his own, — so 
should the teacher strive chiefly to keep the doors 
of nature open, to lead the prince to his kingdom, 
the king to his crown, and with a joy akin to the 
child's, meet type after type, material after mate- 
rial, only to inform it with growing ideals ; to con- 
quer, transfigure, and assimilate it that it *may 
express God's beauty and truth more clearly and 
more truly. This is to seek first the kingdom of 
God for the child ; and when this is done, all these 
things — the material uses, the material skill and 
power, the material advance of the world, and all 
the lesser objects of industry which even the brute 
might grasp — shall be added unto his inheritance. 
For what is so generative as an inspiration } what 
so productive as an ideal ? If such forces could 
be measured and the result set against that of 



1/6 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

mere industrial forces, how instructive would be 
the comparison ! the statue and the song, the 
music and the eloquence of man, — as against his 
grinding toil and the hum of his factories ; the 
school of the future as against the school of the 
past. For the things which the child sees should 
be made symbols to him, — the outward and visi- 
ble expression of an inward and spiritual truth. 
''The invisible things" should be "clearly seen, 
being understood by the things which are made." 

The development of the human soul proceeds 
by the same law as the development of the or- 
ganisms of nature ; therefore they correspond to 
each other ; therefore the ideal waits for its com- 
pletion in the material. The physical phenomena 
about us incorporate thought, and in return minis- 
ter to the soul, and are the signs and pledges to us 
of spiritual truths ; the laws of the natural world 
mirror and present the laws of the spiritual world. 
The continuity of law makes that unity clear to 
the mind as light to the eye, as sound to the ear. 
Never deal with material forms, forgetful of this 
great principle. Let the growth of the child's 
soul correspond to and advance with the growth 
of his mind and body ; do not starve it by mere 
material investigation and purposeless physical 
training. Without the ideal what is called the 
real is but a chaos. The ideal, like the spirit of 
God, moves upon the material, and life results, — 



UTILITY OF THE IDEAL IiV EDUCATION \yy 

organic and orderly life, progressing toward more 
complete and adequate symbolism. The law of 
continuity unites mind with matter. God's dwell- 
ing-place is in the secret of this law, and we can 
teach the real lesson of the material universe, and 
train the physical power of man over it, only as 
we apprehend it in the light of ideality. 

What stirring power an heroic ideal carries to 
our hearts ! Our nerves and muscles grow tense as 
body responds to spirit. Read to your dull class a 
poem like Browning's " Pheidippides ; " tell to your 
careless pupils the story of Stradivarius, as George 
Eliot sings it ; arouse your indifferent class, not by 
rebuke or the prick of the goad, but by the mag- 
netism of your own living earnestness, which shall 
quicken their heart-beats in response to your own, 
and beget in them the strenuous endeavor which 
fires your own pulses ; kindle with love of your 
theme, and all their eyes shall sparkle back the 
flame, ''so through all labor like a thread of gold is 
woven" a divine enthusiasm. They will see run- 
ning through your fingers those beautiful patterns 
which make them eager to imitate, to emulate, and 
to originate, until by and by will come into their 
lives as an undying illumination, that 

*' Ray of heavenly light gilding all forms, 
The unambiguous footsteps of the God 
Who gives its lustre to an insect's wing, 
And wheels His throne upon the rolling worlds." 



178 THE SPIRIT OF TIfE NEW EDUCATION 

What an uplift is this kind of education from 
the low and commonplace notions of a merely 
useful education ! The Promethean fire of ideality 
stirs the lofty soul and makes every task divine ; 
the worker is not tied to earth, though he works 
with the clod, but he holds both earth and heaven 
within his horizon. 

" See how he scorneth human arguments, 
So that nor oar he needs nor other sail 
Than his own wings between so distant shores." 

When we look with weary eyes on the mechan- 
ical drudgery, the dead routine, and earth-bound 
prospect which some of our modern schemes of 
education and the reforms of the day hold out, we 
call to mind once more the words of Dante : — 

" What is this, ye laggard spirits.'' 
What negligence, what standing still is this.'' 
Run to the mountain to strip off the slough 
That lets not God be manifest to you." 

Let education take her winged way above the 
animal senses, above the inorganic material, while 
using and training both, and seize the image which 
makes dead matter into living symbols, drawing 
from every real thing its creative ideal. Carlyle 
says, " Nature is the time-vesture of God." 
Browning sings of: — 

"God in the broken gleams, in the stifled splendor and gloom ; 
Speak to Him for He hears, and spirit with spirit can meet. 
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet." 



UTILITY OF THE IDEAL IN EDUCATION 1 79 

How grandly sound the voices of the astrono- 
mer and the student of nature as they proclaim 
from starry skies and ciphered page, from the 
way of plant and animal life, the closeness of the 
ideal, the consecration of the real ! Says Agassiz, 
" I will frankly tell you that my experience in 
prolonged scientific investigation has convinced me 
that a belief in God — a God who is behind and 
within the vanishing points of human knowledge 
— adds a wonderful stimulus to the man who at- 
tempts to penetrate into the region of the unknown. 
Of myself, I may say that I never make prepa- 
ration for penetrating into some small province of 
nature hitherto undiscovered, without breathing a 
prayer to the Being who hides His secrets from 
me only to allure me graciously on to the unfold- 
ing of them." 

We outgrow what is partial ; we must continually 
search forward for the complete. The hand and 
the tongue need all their cunning for the produc- 
tion of the expressed ideal ; and " the ideal life, the 
completed life, haunts us all." Even this corpo- 
real body has its ideal, which is its essential part ; 
for it is not the decaying particles which come 
into and pass out of it from day to day which can 
be called the body, but rather that inevitable pattern 
according to which all these changing forms are or- 
ganized, and which is the eternal expression of the 
indwelling spirit. Mind is more real than matter. 



l8o THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

spirit more real than mind, and they both work 
through the material of their environment, assimi- 
lating it to the organism of the body, copying that 
ideal which they must express, and through which 
alone they can secure or communicate force and 
knowledge. The ideal body is imperishable : it 
grows up with the growing soul, and at every stage 
offers it a fit instrument for its work and a fit me- 
dium through which to receive its education. So 
it is, only a degree removed, with all the material 
world without us, which should be set before us 
and put within our grasp as a secondary force and 
medium of expression of our minds and souls : 
it should never be treated as alien to the uses 
of the soul, or for any other use than as the pos- 
•sible instrument and image of our ideals of truth, 
love, and beauty, to be revealed by the trained 
hand and brain. Every outward subject of study 
and experiment may be regarded as awaiting our 
recognition as an expression of the divinity of 
our own nature, and of the divine symbolism 
which responds to and should awaken it. 

" Every natural flower which grows on earth 
Inaplies a flower on the spiritual side, 
Substantial, archetypal, all aglow 
With blossoming causes, — not so far away 
That we whose spirit is somewhat cleared, 
May catch at somethmg of the bloom and breath 
Too vaguely apprehended, though indeed 
Still apprehended." 



UTILITY OF THE IDEAL IN EDUCATION l8l 

We must from our own soul-activities thus 
inform the material creation with divine life. 
Nature has packed away this glowing ideality even 
in her inorganic material : her coal-beds are 
banked and consolidated sunshine moulded into 
patterns of what was once growing and organic 
beauty ; her yellow sands are heaps of crystals 
shaped by the mysterious and intangible vibra- 
tions wrought by the ideality of light and heat. 
How the history of the solid earth illustrates the 
ideality of the physical processes ! It is only the 
ideal which has prepared the earth for man's uses. 
Utility is a common name for causes and effects 
which without ideality have no significance. In- 
dustry is a monotonous and unworthy succession 
of efforts, if not inspired by ideality of purpose, 
of motive, or of imagination ; and even the crude 
substances we train our hands to work with call 
upon us to produce their highest utility by bring- 
ing forth their imprisoned ideals. 

The training of the body is for the better and 
fuller expression of the mind and soul ; not to 
overpower and dwarf the mind, but to give it 
energy. The body for the mind, and both for the 
soul. This is the true doctrine of education. 
Give manual training, that man may give shape 
and outlook to his ideas; give power to his 
muscle, that he may control his material of ex- 
pression. Give physical development, that he may 



1 82 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

have vigor in every realm of his activities. He 
must carve out his thought in whatever stuff the 
world has to offer. ''In man," says Royce, ''the 
ideal and the real blend and take coloring from 
one another." Education must embrace in every 
act the intellect and the soul or it is shorn of its 
utility. We must throw the inspiration of our 
highest activities into every channel of work. 
We may work in any line of either manual or intel- 
lectual development under this inspiration ; it may 
be of love either for another or for our country, hu- 
manity, or God, — this is the ideality of affection. It 
may be with the inspiration of a clear image which 
fills the mind, and is copied in material forms ; it is 
a mental pattern of beauty, truth, or harmony, and 
must be expressed, — this is the ideality of art or 
of science ; or we may work under the inspiration 
of devotion to duty, to God, and to eternal issues, 
and this is the highest motive-power, the ideality 
of religion. Any or all of these inspirations pro- 
duce the greatest possible results of human activ- 
ity. The old Greeks understood this in offering 
their best service in any direction on the altar of 
their gods, as the highest consecration of even 
their physical efforts. 

Let us have no dead materialism or aimless 
motive in our new educational departure, but make 
all industrial training glow with mental or moral 
fervor, that the real and ideal may unite in the 



UTILITY OF THE IDEAL TV EDUCATION 1 83 

most perfect utility. Only when the idea of con- 
tinuity and harmony shall be fully conceived shall 
we be able to secure eternal utility. As nature 
associates with the physical training of childhood 
all the beauty, mystery, and spiritual meaning of 
its outward forms, so must the educator inspire all 
the material of educative employment, all crude 
opportunities and tentative essays of industrial 
work and training, with their related possibilities 
of spiritual expression. Taste and feeling must 
stimulate industry if it is to become creative. 
Symbols of beauty and truth adapted to his 
degree of advancement should be presented to 
the worker ; if he can do no more than copy them 
let the moral idea of truth in execution and faith- 
ful imitation inspire the eye, the hand, and the 
heart. Let some bright hope born of love ani- 
mate the labor and give it a finer quality and more 
complete finish. Enrich the intellectuality, refine 
the purpose, exalt the motive of the worker if you 
would raise the tone of the work. In all these 
industrial occupations do not shut the door on 
that which differentiates human from brute indus- 
try ; viz., the expression of the mind and soul. 
The child's share of the divine thought must 
blossom into form throuo:h the skill of his fino:ers 
if one element of value is to be added to the 
dead matter upon which the child works. What 
force shall be mighty enough to transform indus- 



1 84 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

try into creation and thereby make it human ? Is 
it not the power of thought, the energy of love, 
the force of the divine ideal, which springs from 
man's spiritual relationship ? The God in man 
reconciling the world unto Himself? 



THE GOSPEL OF MOTHERHOOD 



AT THE GRADUATION OF KINDERGARTEN NOR- 
MAL CLASS 



I SPEAK of elemental motherhood, — the moth- 
erhood of nature, of humanity, and of divinity : 
it is the glad tidings of the universe ; it holds 
the promise of the future ; it conserves the riches 
of the past ; it is the brooding joy of growing 
life, — God's spirit moving upon the face of the 
deep. The motherhood of nature is its nourish- 
ing power, its close embrace of the springs of 
life, the fostering of that generative germ of evo- 
lution which the Source of Life implanted in the 
universe ; it is the embodiment of creative love, 
and the constant expression and endless communi- 
cation of that love. The heavens showed it forth 
when the earth was without form and void ; the 
rhythm of that anthem which the stars sang to- 
gether was its cradle-song, and the nebulous halo 
of clustering systems was its dream of birth. 

The motherhood of nature is infinite and sub- 

i8s 



1 86 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

lime ; it is an ever-present tenderness, companion- 
ship, personality, intimacy, comfort, patience, and 
self-surrender ; a great beating heart close to our 
heart, a conscious permeating sympathy of being; 
the innermost of nature. I love to think of 
mother-nature awaiting the growth of life within 
her ample bosom, the gradual unfolding of the 
germ of all created things. The eons were not 
too long for her faith and patient power ; the 
heavens were not too vast, the earth with its 
infinite fulness was not too abundant, for her long- 
suffering ; for she knew through all her fibres the 
present God : from one end to the other of time 
and space the tender love of God was brooding, 
and every pulse-beat of the universe spoke the 
potential gratitude of eternity. 

Did this universal mother dream of her myriad 
children.-^ Did she see in prophetic vision her 
grand revolving systems, her universes of suns, 
her galaxies of stars, her firmaments of luminous 
centres, and her grand enginery of cosmical forces .'' 
Did she know of her planets and her moons, of the 
myriad development of being in each, the innum- 
erable entities, her children of life } No : the 
mother only dreams and trusts and nurtures. She 
finds the past, present, and future but one eternal 
Now, and devotes all her energies of spirit, thought, 
and physical life to the results of the moment, the 
ever-succeeding moment, — which is eternity. 



KINDERGARTEN ADDRESSES 1 8/ 

Then the beautiful motherhood of the earth ! 
The vaporous gloom of upper and nether atmos- 
pheres, the pulsing of spheric seas, the lines of 
polarization and demarcation, the slowly gather- 
ing crust, like the hardening shell of the growing 
^g%, the nodules of various life, the geologic peri- 
ods of different embryonic stages, the successive 
types of form and function, the consummate flow- 
er of plant, animal, and human life covering her 
breast and drinking in the generous current of 
her life-blood ; how rich, how beneficent, and how 
prodigal a mother she has been ! 

We, her dearest children, revel in her mother- 
hood of lavish beauty : the brooding nest, the 
swellino: bud, the self-surrender of seasons and 
tides, of each for all and all for each ; giving, as a 
mother gives, her watching, her protection, her 
tender care to every budding cell, to every preg- 
nant protoplasm, to every evolving molecule and 
organism ; waiting patient and believing, through 
multiplied disaster, for every crystal to fix its sym- 
metry, for every seed to grow, for every creature 
to fulfil its developing purpose, and for man, her 
darling, to achieve his destiny. 

Dear mother earth that clothes us with our 
mortal frames, that marshals for us our warders of 
light, that weaves the curtains of our repose, that 
ministers to our strength and glory of meridian 
life, and then leads us gently down the slope of 



1 88 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

age and takes us again to her bosom ! From her 
dust we came, by it we live and flourish, and to it 
we return. How dear is the earth, our mother ! 
beautiful and wonderful in the sunny radiance of 
our youth, glorious in the full tide of our maturity, 
offering us gifts at every turn, revealing her 
treasures to our opening eyes, and winning us with 
endearing caresses to try our strength, to attain 
by struggle, and to build up an immortal inherit- 
ance from the contact and opportunity as well as 
the difficulties she presents to us, as kind in what 
she withholds as in what she gives ; we lie upon 
her verdant breast to dream of a fairer home, and 
ungratefully babble to her of a paradise far away 
whose hues she alone has painted. How close her 
heart throbs to our own as she leads us beside her 
still waters ! How we mount up on wings as eagles, 
while she spreads her skies above us, and with the 
self-abnegation of motherhood points us to brighter 
worlds ! She feeds us and heals us ; she waits 
upon our cradle and upon our altar ; she kisses 
our lids together at last, and leaves a smile upon 
the marble lips as tenderly as if we had spent our 
lives to repay her. Motherhood is indeed the 
highest title and office of the earth we love. 

In the realm of plant-life this grand impulse is 
so plain as to stand for a symbol of life in the 
highest realm ; the history and plan of every 
vegetable organism is the provision for and carry- 



KhVDERGARTEN ADDRESSES I 89 

ing forward of this beautiful instinct of nature ; 
the root, the stem, the bud, the leaves, the flower, 
speak forever of the devotion of the plant to its 
ideal of reproduction and ^nurture. What count- 
less devices for the protection of each germ, each 
organ ! what wonderful contrivance for growth 
and play of activities ! the soft wrappings more 
silky than the textures of Samarcand, the zephyr- 
ous winged envelopes, the cunning traps, the 
springy coils, the curious devices, all to assist this 
delicate child in its growth and safety, as if she 
were the sole nursling of the tender mother ; how 
ineffably loving and significant of mother-love is 
the plant-life of the globe ! 

But as the ideal of motherhood advances in the 
scale of being how much clearer becomes its ex- 
pression — the mother with her young, the insect 
yielding itself to the martyrdom of metamorphosis, 
clothing itself with the death-shroud of the chrys- 
alis to give fuller and freer life and development 
to its offspring, the bird with her callow brood, the 
fish carrying up to the flooding streams the news 
of prolific generation, the wild beast fondling her 
helpless young within her guarded den, the cattle 
upon a thousand hills, the beast of the forest, the 
monster of the seas, all give themselves to the 
privilege of motherhood with a fidelity which has 
no stint and no count ; the days are too short for 
their devotion, the nights too gentle for their 



IQO THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATIOA 

guardianship. God has charged them with this 
precious treasure, and who among them all is 
recreant ? They witness to us something of God's 
measure of motherly duty, as they minister to the 
needs of their generations. See the mother-lamb, 
the mother-bird ; her gentle sheltering, her anxious 
care, her courage of defence, her faithfulness unto 
death, and then begin to understand what God 
means by motherhood. Watch the dumb creatures 
enduring pain for their young without a murmur, 
glorying in their safety, joy, and beauty ; lapping 
their glossy necks, enticing them to exercise, 
bhssful in their companionship, agonized at parting. 
That motherhood is the crown of life is attested 
by these our lowly fellow-beings, who thus do all 
thpy can to express somewhat of God's tender love 
for his creatures. 

But human motherhood reveals divine love more 
fully than aught else in the great plan. What a 
miracle it is as it descends into the countless 
homes on this round planet ! ever a fresh, a sacred, 
a wondrous mystery ! God with us ! All the sor- 
rows which attend it are as nothing in the light of 
its proud and awe-touched joy. The keynote of 
its anthem was uttered by Eve, and comes down to 
us clear and strong through the centuries in its 
divine as well as human recognition, '' I have 
gotten a man from the Lord." Mother-love paints 
for us the very color and touch of God's love, — His 



KINDERGARTEN ADDRESSES 



191 



tender love, His patient love, His providential and 
embracing love, His faithful love, His forgiving 
love, His self-sacrificing love. His dying love : in 
all these phases and aspects of a mother's love 
as we have seen it, as we have known it, and as 
we have felt it, we see drawn the very outline and 
pattern of God's love for us ; for what other shapes 
and language can syllable our ideal of God so well 
as those primal and holy whisperings at our cradle 
and in our mothers' arms ? Who but a mother 
could show us how loving, how patient, how 
believing, and how forgiving God can be ? 

The gospel of motherhood is a redeeming gos- 
pel. If we go to the lost and degraded, to the 
ignorant, the suffering, and the tempted, as a 
mother goes to her child, how can we fail to re- 
cover, to comfort, and to save? In the spirit of 
this beautiful gospel we shall go with open arms, 
with sympathetic entreaty, with helping hands, 
and through us God's love will appeal most per- 
fectly to the souls we seek to save. This is the 
true secret of woman's power over others : let her 
surrender herself to its impulse and expression ; 
let the teacher feel herself as a mother to her 
flock ; in this the kindergarten shows us the 
example ; its very philosophy was learned from the 
relation of the mother to her child. The soul- 
activities of motherhood are the great privilege of 
the teacher of little ones ; she can take them into 



192 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

her dower of womanhood to bless and ilUiminate 
all children, and especially the homeless and worse 
than motherless. Are your arms and hearts not 
large enough and strong enough, dear teachers, to 
clasp them with the full power and love of mother- 
hood ? They are all God's children, and He calls 
you to show them what you can of His measure 
and quality of loving ; so to express your mother- 
hood. 

The gospel of motherhood has done a great, a 
blessed work in the world. What an influence in 
Christendom has been even the contemplation of 
its image in art — the Holy Mother and Child! 
Christmas is but a celebration of this proud and 
tender absorption of love in its highest human 
form. We gaze upon the beautiful Madonnas to 
refresh our souls, to put to rest our perplexities 
and harmonize our being ; we breathe the pure 
atmosphere of motherhood, we feel it to be a 
symbol of God's love, and we grow calm and find 
our souls in poise ; our faith is renewed for all 
poor and warped humanity as we see the child in 
his mother's arms and know it to be his God-given 
place. For the divine love wears an aspect of 
motherhood to the trusting soul ; let us try to 
understand how close and deep and true it is for 
every child of God's. We are not waifs in a 
strange city, but at home in the arms of God ; and 
if human motherhood had been created only as a 



KINDERGARTEN ADDRESSES 1 93 

demonstration, an exposition of the divine moth- 
erhood in God, it could not have accomplished 
such a purpose more clearly than it does as a part 
of human history and experience. We learn from 
our utmost tenderness, our dearest embraces, our 
most complete self-abnegation for our children, the 
beginning of God's tenderness, the alphabet of 
his yearning love, the first syllables of His wel- 
come and forgiveness. 

Take then, as Froebel had the wisdom and spir- 
itual discernment to do, the relation of the mother 
and child as the pattern of your most helpful and 
nurturing relation with the children, and the meth- 
ods of the mother with the child as the model for 
the truest methods of education, and when you 
can say with him, " The nursery was my univer- 
sity," you will have received the highest prepara- 
tion and grace attainable for the teacher. 



THE RELATION OF THE KINDERGAR- 
TEN TO THE SCHOOL COURSES 



AN ADDRESS TO KINDERGARTNERS 



Have you ever listened, dear Kindergartners, to 
some grand sonata of Beethoven or Mozart, to 
some fugue of Bach's, or to one of Liszt's mysteri- 
ous preludes, and while you drew in the deep sig- 
nificance of each successive movement, and thrilled 
responsive to its various presentments of the 
beauty and glory and wonderful unfolding of the 
riddle of life, have you noted how the great theme 
which was announced in its simplicity at first is 
ever and anon recurring, ever shifting from key to 
key, breaking through every fantasy, every varia- 
tion, now dominating the adagio, now the scherzo, 
now the andante, now the rondo, singing itself 
out even in the capriccioso ; ever the same beauti- 
ful theme of the master's creative impulse, the 
tone-sequence and proportion of Nature, inter- 
preted by genius ? 

So, have I thought, do you give us the true 

194 



KINDERGARTEN ADDRESSES 195 

theme of our grand symphony of education as you 
lead your child orchestra at the opening choral of 
school-life. You are like the master-musician 
who strikes out the great harmony, that many a 
listening heart may catch its inspiration and 
weave it into utterance, till we hear its notes 
from chime to chime, from melody to melody, 
through every phase and strophe of our swelling 
anthem of child-culture. 

For the ancient mists and vapors which have 
enveloped the idea of the kindergarten in its 
earlier days among us, through whose dense me- 
dium we saw Froebel's consummate philosophy 
only as a meaningless amusement for childhood, a 
mere whiling away of useless time till school train- 
ing should begin, — these clouds of ignorant uncon- 
cern are vanishing before the sun of educational 
science, and we begin to discern the clear outlines 
of kindergarten philosophy. This is good news, 
indeed, for you who have felt the essential unsym- 
pathy, the deep want of comprehension, the al- 
most contempt with which your work has been 
too often regarded. Your day of recognition and 
appreciation has dawned, and your long and stead- 
fast patience and faith are beginning to receive 
their recompense of reward. Your faces are now 
toward the sunrise, the light of rosy skies is upon 
your seed-scattering fingers, the ground you tread 
is holy, the breeze about you whispers of heaven, 



196 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

and the harvest for which you are planting is 
white already for the garners of the Lord. We 
have heard the sweet notes of your coming, and 
arc learning to sing them for the full chorus 
of our harvest-home. 

When we adopted the kindergarten as the 
foundation of our school system, we adopted at 
once its spirit, its philosophy, and its methods as 
the pattern and formative germ of all our school- 
works. Perhaps to some of us this breadth of 
application was partly unconscious : we saw the 
value of it in its place, but not its reach, its scope, 
or its essential power ; we saw it as a tree planted 
by rivers of waters, but had not yet discovered 
that it was for the healing of the nations. This is 
the history of every great discovery or impulse 
for the advancement of mankind : it is set in its 
place blindly and unconsciously, and the world 
learns its pregnant power only by observing its 
growth and adaptability ; but, consciously or un- 
consciously, we have set up the kindergarten as 
a standard of principles and methods, from the 
mother's arms to the alma mater of university 
training. We have sounded the theme, and it 
must rej:)eat itself in every movement and render- 
ing of the harmony : it is the spirit of the kinder- 
garten, as the spirit of love, of faith, of mutual 
helpfulness ; the philosophy of the kindergarten 
in its free development, its obedience to natural 



KINDERGARTEN ADDRESSES 1 97 

law, its symmetry of growth, its evolution of all 
the powers of humanity ; the methods of the kin- 
dergarten in careful observation, conscientious 
expression, constructive effort, originative power; 
all these we want at every stage of school educa- 
tion and the education of life. 

Now, gentle Kindergartncrs, we all look to you. 
You have stood, like the artist with his plastic clay, 
forming the model for later workers, making a 
pattern for those who await its inspiration to con- 
vert other material into inspirational forms, that 
every grade of school-work may be moulded in its 
symmetry. In all our schools the teachers now 
gather in childlike attitude at the door of the kin- 
dergarten, saying, "Tell us all its meaning, instruct 
us how to reach its spirit, interpret to us the 
secret of its philosophy." To meet this growing 
cry in all its earnestness is your happy privilege. 
Remember that the child with its mother is the 
essential object-lesson, the heavenly strain which 
is to dominate all your music. Interpret it with 
Nature's art as Froebel sang it to you ; not that 
you love Froebel much, but that you love nature 
more. Do not turn from the child who is set in 
your midst, even to the Master who set him there : 
the lesson is the lesson of the mother and the 
child, as God expressed love and nurture in that 
relation. Froebel showed the beautiful picture in 
all its phases as Jesus showed it in its spiritual 



198 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

significance. Seek to attune your ear to the 
chord, that you may render it singly and purely, 
and in all its harmony. 

How far, dear Kindergartners, have we come 
to meet you as yet ? You will surely run to us 
while yet a great way off, and give us the embrace 
of welcome. We have felt out for all the great 
gifts you offer us, and such as we have been able 
to grasp we have set in their places ; we know the 
treasure is in your hands, and we implore you to 
unlock the casket which guards it, that we may 
all be illuminated by its radiance. In its light, 
already glimmering through our dark traditions, 
we have almost broken down the old spirit of 
school government by arbitrary compulsion ; we 
have confronted the discipline of the rattan by the 
discipline of that love which is the fulfilling of the 
law; we have introduced the natural and healthful 
activity of manual training, as the normal method 
of completed thought and helpful energies, into 
our primary and grammar school courses, with 
observation and elementary science lessons, con- 
necting, as Froebel taught, the child with nature 
through his sensory and motor activities, and 
thereby with man and with God. We have clay- 
modelling and drawing from kindergarten to high 
school, paper-folding and cutting and constructive 
work, — in wood and cardboard, — as well as sew- 
ing and stick-laying, with drawing and color, in our 



KINDERGARTEN ADDRESSES 1 99 

primaries, and sewing, cooking, and carpentry in 
the grammar schools. Have we not made a 
great stride in educational philosophy during the 
last decade ? And for this we thank you largely. 

The freedom and order of nature is the plan to 
which we would attain : we recognize it through 
all its associations as the plan which the kinder- 
garten has initiated. We want the kindergarten 
in every primary school building, that we may 
have the model ever before us. You Kindergart- 
ners are no longer regarded as mistresses of 
infant schools, as the insignificant ushers at the 
gate ; but you are the royal seed-sowers, the tone- 
masters, the standard-bearers, and we turn to you 
to plant for us the seed which bears an hundred- 
fold, to make the pattern true and fair, to teach 
us how to render the theme in all its immortal 
vibrations. 



FROEBEL'S BIRTHDAY 



ADDRESS BEFORE MISS WHEELOCK' S KINDER- 
GARTEN-TRAINING CI ASS IN CHAUNCY HALL 
SCHOOL, BOSTON 



When we wish to recognize our indebtedness 
and express our gratitude to those^who have con- 
ferred lasting benefits upon us and upon the 
world, we take occasion to celebrate their birth- 
days and recount their life-histories, for our in- 
spiration and their honor. 

This day we dedicate to Froebel, as to one of 
the noblest and most far-seeing benefactors of the 
race. He had not only great insight and pro- 
found philosophy, but a pure, childlike soul, un- 
faltering faith in the child's possibilities, and in 
nature's methods of educating the child. I like 
to think of him during those years at Keilhau, 
with a few peasant children gathered about him, 
carrying on in faith and love his great work, 
which was to prove itself to coming generations. 
What an eternal inspiration comes to us from the 
thought of such devotion to an ideal ! 

2CX) 



KINDERGARTEN ADDRESSES 20I 

We think also, on this day, of those who have 
stood by him and have had faith in his ideal all 
through the darkness and misapprehension of the 
early stages of the kindergarten ; we are glad to 
remember with pride and affection those who in- 
troduced it to this country, and declared its great 
and simple message. Miss Elizabeth Peabody, 
her sweet voice crying in the wilderness of Amer- 
ican schools for little children, thrilled us a gener- 
ation ago. How firm and glowing an enthusiasm 
she aroused and disseminated while as yet no one 
understood Froebel ! I remember her earnest 
utterance, her tearful yet smiling persuasions, her 
clear and convincing appeals. She said, " I be- 
lieve this kindergarten principle and practice is 
the second coming of Christ : it will regenerate 
the world ; it reaches all men through the mothers 
and children." Let her honored name be repeated 
with Froebel's to-day : she is the worthy apostle 
of such a spirit and doctrine as he set forth, 
and her beneficent life has been for us its medium 
and embodiment. 

Then our dear Mrs. Shaw, who poured into the 
work for years, riches of love and faith and 
patience ; who devoted her heart and thought, as 
well as her purse, to a broad, intelligent, and tire- 
less effort for this education, involving also man- 
ual training and useful industries, — praise and 
honor to her on this day of jubilee! Her illustri- 



202 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

ous father, Louis Agassiz, teacher, is said to 
have replied to a man who called his attention to 
the pecuniary advantage he might gain, *' I can- 
not afford to make money ; " now, when the earth 
that he had revealed rent her bosom to pour 
treasures into his lap, and the mines he had dis- 
covered in his scientific research were coined into 
wealth for his child, she, in the spirit of her father, 
gives it to education, and distils it in the labora- 
tory of these new and glorious undertakings for 
the children of the land. 

What a light of sweet charities she throws upon 
the day which celebrates the advent of Froebel 
and this new education ! Blessed among women 
shall she be ! 

I was thinking, as the class went through the 
songs and games, of some of the distinctive fea- 
tures of Froebel's training, and was struck by the 
fact of how much he makes of the hand. It 
enters into all expression. It becomes an integral 
part in the development of the human being. 
The mother's hand means so much to us; her 
busy, nervous hand, always doing a thousand good 
things for her family, never quiet or listless, but 
communicating love and sympathy and blessing ; 
the soft caressing fingers of the mother, the ver- 
satile activity of that nervous structure full of a 
living love, — it is according to nature that Froebel 
emphasizes its office and power. I like to see it 



KINDERGARTEN ADDRESSES 263 

in all the exercises of kindergarten. Teacher and 
children, their hands waving and swinging, man- 
ipulating, gesticulating, communicating, — full of 
thought as of movement, — and so closely related 
to head and heart ! Yes, this unity of the head, 
the heart, and the hands is a very strong feature 
of Froebel's philosophy of education. The link- 
age of forces and activities, the harmony of na- 
ture, is a very distinctive element in the kinder- 
garten training, and must be as distinctive in all 
education ; for when does a time arrive that it 
is less important or less universal than it has been 
shown in its beginning 1 And freedom, sponta- 
neity, unfettered activity, are Froebel's primal con- 
ditions of education. This principle is so grand we 
must never lose our conscious participation in it: 
it is the air we breathe, the nurture we must yield 
ourselves to, the glory of the endless evolution of 
life. 

I like to recognize the reflex influence of kin- 
dergarten training upon those who are its sub- 
jects. That is one of the most beautiful things 
about it. I cannot help recalling that scene in 
the life of Jesus, as he enters into the sacred 
chamber where the young girl lies amid signs of 
death, and says, "■ She is not dead, but sleeping." 
Then taking her by the hand^ his winning voice 
breaking into a caress, he says, '' Ta-litha-cumi," — 
*' Maiden, arise," — and she arises at his bidding, 



204 ^^^^ SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

and he leads her to her mother. So Froebel says 
to the young girl who waits passive and uncon- 
scious for the dawning of womanhood, " ' Maiden, 
arise,* lift up your eyes to the beauty and the 
joy of doing; enter the holy gateway of woman- 
hood with your hand in the hand of the little 
child, live with and for the children and you will 
reap the fulness of immortal joy." 



SECRET OF THE KINDERGARTEN. 



REMARKS AFTER THE PRESENTATION OF FLOW- 
ERS BY MRS. SHAIV AT THE GRADUATION 
OF HER NORMAL KINDERGARTEN 



Dear Girls, — As you take these beautiful flow- 
ers from the hand which most consecrates, endears, 
and sweetens them for you, you can but keep your 
minds and hearts wide open to nature and to God. 
It is not from the stagnant pool that the river of 
life is supplied. We must be receptive to all 
broad and high influences of thought and of feel- 
ing if we would minister to the children's real 
souls and selves. We have dedicated ourselves to 
the children, — the hope of the future, the promise 
of life, the evolution of humanity. This conse- 
cration of our powers dwarfs all other outlook of 
usefulness or happiness. I see its illumination 
upon your faces as you yield yourselves to the 
full significance of this hour : it shines like the 
altar lights through the chancel windows, telling 
of the worship and sanctity within. The holiest 

205 



206 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

feeling in human experience glimmers in your 
eyes, and its tender suggestions rest upon your 
lips as you stand with your offered service gladly 
at the threshold of womanhood. 

You have taken up the science of education at 
its beginning, as disciples of one who said, " Come, 
let us live with our children." What life is 
sweeter, more repaying, more free and full ? I 
can testify that the supremest moments of life are 
those in which we feel most intensely our rela- 
tions to childhood, our vital connection with those 
who are nearest the kingdom of heaven. The 
womanly soul is one with childhood, and is 
ever conscious of that union. The " eternally 
womanly " is the deepest element of strength in 
humanity. The greatest of men, as well as 
women, have possessed this element most largely : 
it is the power of becoming a mirror of God's love 
and goodness, and a clear medium of His thought 
and will. His life and spirit. This womanliness 
of nature is the essence of self-renunciation, of ab- 
sorbed consecration, and of unconscious aspira- 
tion : it leads humanity upward and onward, as 
Goethe has said. It is sweetness and strength, 
the reconciliation of opposites, the spirituality of 
all things. In this height of self-devotion you 
may become a part of the divine presence in 
human hearts : this is the mysticism at which 
many cavil in Froebel's philosophy ; but to my 



KINDERGARTEN ADDRESSES 20/ 

mind it is its last and finest distillation, the very 
attar of roses, of his educational methods. We 
cannot tell it to all the world. I would not ex- 
pose it to the sneer of the materialist or the smile 
of the scoffer. I shall not flaunt it in the 
face of the mere adept in the technique of the 
kindergarten ; but to you, the esoteric disciples, 
I may breathe this most profound secret of our 
calling, — the indwelling spirit of our work, — the 
conscious oneness with Nature and God, which 
we feel at this sacred moment, and in which we 
are dedicated to our glorious life-work. 



OUR DIVINE RELATIONSHIPS 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE SUNDAY COTERIE OF 
THE WOMAN'S UNION 



Each organism of creation dwells in the midst 
of other organisms to which it is related. The 
earth is bound to its cordon of sister planets, and 
they all swing together about the sun, which is, in 
its turn, companioned with myriad suns through 
eternal grooves of mutual relationships. Each 
molecule has its centre of related motion, and 
never vibrates without responding to forces which 
surround it. We are all nucleii in a reticulated 
system, drawn hither and thither by our attach- 
ments, and straining at our cords like tethered 
lambs. We are bound to earth and the physical 
universe with its relentless laws and conditions, 
and to heaven and the spiritual universe in an 
endless determination of destiny. We are ani- 
mals and angels by turn, as we feel our down- 
ward or our upward attachments growing with 
every tug we give them ; and as we sway within 

208 



OUR DIVINE RELATIONSHIPS 209 

their alternate tension, we are constantly tighten- 
ing the cord of an irrevocable tendency. 

The shapeless amoeba in the drop of water 
reaches out its jelly hand in response to the touch 
of every atom of matter in its little sea. Nowhere 
does life exist unresponsive and unconnected, but 
acts or reacts constantly upon the life around it, 
making attachments which are channels of growth 
and communication. The mineral elements in 
the stony bosom of the earth wait in silent pa- 
tience for the asking plant-root whose delicate 
fibres wander and reach ^bout for their hidden 
strength ; the anchoring threads intwine them- 
selves about the earthy particles, and with the 
help of dissolving liquids which percolate the 
sandy soil, they suck up through their hairy lips 
what they need ; and the inorganic mineral which 
supplies it is lifted into organic being. Earth- 
forces drawing on the one side, and heavenward 
forces on the other, strive for mastery ; and by 
transfiguring attachments the mineral becomes a 
plant, and thereby rises in its estate, its activities, 
and its opportunities. The plant, in its turn, is 
fastened and limited to the earth by the very 
organs that feed it, but at the same time is ex- 
panded into broader growth, fuller life, and more 
complete development by its upward growth, its 
touch with light, until its connections with ani- 
mal organisms is effected, and it becomes trans- 
formed to a higher type of existence. 



210 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

The beautiful Medusa sails over the summer 
seas, its fairy pulses beating to the rhythm of 
wave and tide, its soft tissues sensitive to contact, 
and reflecting the presence of organisms as deli- 
cate as its own. Nay, all that universe of invisi- 
ble life, peopled with beings so diminutive that 
only the microscope or the tremor they create 
betrays them, is governed by the same law of con- 
necting processes and reflex activities ; bound to 
the lower life which feeds it, to the jostling crowds 
of equal life which accompany it, and to the higher 
sphere where beckoning hands await its grasp and 
lift it to a freer stage of development. 

Like a brain-cell in the nerve-tissue which sur- 
rounds it is the conscious life of man, so sensitive 
to the impression of its environment, so multiplex 
in its connections, so rich in opportunities to give 
and to receive. Every action, every thought, is 
a vibrant atom, a source of ether waves which 
expand in limitless succession, and infringe on 
other orbits of thought and action, in eternal 
undulation. Our attachments are infinite below, 
around, and above us ; as animals we are para- 
sites on the earth, its most highly differenti- 
ated portion, so to speak, moulded of its sub- 
stance, governed by its laws, and tied down to its 
range of outlook. But with what subtle cords are 
we bound also to other realms of life and activity. 
The magnetic ties which hold us to our fellows 



OUR DIVINE RELATIONSHIPS 211 

are firm as adamant ; we clasp our friends with 
links of steel, and love as strong as death ; every 
heart-beat of sympathy quickens the current 
which flows between kindred lives, and all are 
united in fraternal interest and affection. As we 
strengthen these attachments by exercise, so we 
intensify and enlarge their activity until we are 
one with humanity, as well as one in sympathy 
with all created being. We suffer, we rejoice, we 
desire, we strive, we hope, and we aspire, with the 
universal heart of nature and of man ; and while 
with our growing connections our individuality 
deepens, the centric forces gathering strength 
from increasing complexity of structure, by the 
same impulse and law we are knit more closely 
and more widely to all personalities, and can help 
and strengthen, enlighten and uplift mankind in 
proportionate scope and degree. How true and 
unfailing are the common human ties ! Father, 
mother, husband, wife, brother, sister, child, and 
friend : surging and compelling waves of feeling 
are expressed in those vital words ; they pull at 
our heart-strings through life and death. Home, 
and native land ; yes, many precious lives have 
been laid upon the altar of sacrifice for devotion 
to these simple and pure attachments. But while 
we hold so dear this clustering knot of earthly 
loves, we cannot forget with what eternal strands 
we are connected with the world beyond the veil 



212 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

of sense. The whole creation is travailing with 
groping hands to lift itself by those heavenly- 
cords. 

The brown beetle climbs the swaying reed, hesi- 
tating between the dark pool's accustomed bed 
and the bright unknown sphere above, which 
breathes its mysterious hope to him as he ascends, 
panting to be free : his lower environment and 
the organism to which it was adapted recede ; he 
bursts his prison bars and is glorified. The dull, 
inert mass of mineral parts with its lifeless parti- 
cles, by disintegration and by dissolution is pre- 
pared for its exaltation, is drawn upward to take 
its place in the progress of evolved conditions 
and structure, and is on the path toward conscious 
freedom : it has multiplied its attachments, inten- 
sified its activities, and is devoted henceforth to 
more varied and exalted uses ; it is rising on the 
stepping-stones of its dead self, as we also are to 
rise, and fills a more harmonious part in the uni- 
versal life. The plant grows and reaches forth 
its leafage, its bloom, and its fruitage to the sun- 
shine, feeding the senses with beauty and fra- 
grance, the heart with tenderness, and the soul 
with the expression of Divine love. For, as we 
consider the lilies of the field we see how they 
minister to our spiritual needs, and we assimilate 
not only the physical nourishment they offer us 
but the deeper re-enforcement of symbolic truth ; 



OUR DIVINE RELATIONSHIPS 213 

and so the plant, having entered into the Ufe of 
many, has taken its place as a round in the lad- 
der, and lifts itself up by its highest attachments. 
Like the mineral, the vegetable, and the ani- 
mal, we too are growing in the line of our attach- 
ments. If those of the earth and sense life are 
stronger, we are growing of the earth, earthy and 
sensual. The physical life must be rooted, but 
must spring up above the ground for its normal 
growth. Social sympathies may be strong and 
fervent, but not limited to this life nor bounded 
by this horizon. We must throw out attachments 
toward the divine, like the tendrils which draw the 
vine to its support. These avenues of our com^- 
merce with that heavenly coast must be free and 
clear if we would receive the priceless treasures 
which freight the white-winged argosies of faith. 
These tides of communication must be unob- 
structed, that our spiritual associations may be 
close and responsive ; for we are workers together 
with God, and our relationships are reciprocal in 
that direction as well as any other. According to 
the methods in the natural world, which are but 
patterns of the spiritual, man himself must be- 
come the expression of God if he receives His 
spirit and is nourished by His word. This is reli- 
gion ; the binding of the ties between God and man, 
as the only condition of spiritual growth. Who 
can tell how many and how close these divine 



214 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

relationships of the soul may be ? As the blind 
can know nothing and be told nothing of light, so 
the soul that has not fixed its divine attachments is 
not only ignorant of, but beyond the possibility of 
apprehending, divine realities. 

The little child easily recognizes these unseen 
connections ; but they become severed by distrust, 
withered by disuse, atrophied by the withdrawal 
of all life's energies to the lower associations of self 
and sense. How shall we stimulate and strengthen 
them ? how keep the vital current flowing freely, 
with invigorating power from heaven, into our 
human souls } If we would grow upward we must 
build the organic fibres of that many-stranded 
cord which reaches toward the infinite ; we must 
see the eternal, absolute beauty until we long for 
it ; we must feel the divine goodness and love un- 
til we aspire to it with all our hearts ; we must 
subordinate those connections which draw all our 
life-forces to self, which strengthen ambition, or 
feed covetousness, pride, or any form of animalism ; 
we must feed the soul by meditation and high 
ideals of duty, exercise it by prayer and by right 
conduct. All things are strengthened by use : 
aspiration, love, worship, communion with God, 
must grow with practice, like all activities, and be 
built up by habit, as structure grows by exercise 
of its functions. We cannot feed the lower 
appetites and preserve the divine activities ; if 



OUR DIVINE RELATIONSHIPS 21 5 

we are growing downwards, we shall shrink 
upwards. 

How forcibly does evolution teach us this doc- 
trine of struggle against the dominance of animal 
powers and activities, of conquest over the lower 
nature, from which we would escape and free our- 
selves, like the butterfly from the chrysalis. Deny 
the opportunities, cut off the connections, break 
the bonds. Ah, that is hard ! Is it not impossi- 
ble by the effort of the human will alone, un- 
inspired by something which may come to us 
through those other ties of the soul with God and 
His spirit } It is more according to the methods 
of life in the natural world that this victory over 
self and the world should come through construc- 
tive agencies, through a firmer hold to the divine 
impulses of faith in God, in truth, in purity, in 
love, and in law — which we learn by observation 
of nature and life. If you want the vine to cling 
to its right support, make its tendrils coil more 
tenaciously about it, and as they strengthen and 
the plant draws closer and firmer in that direc- 
tion, and holds up its aspiring crown, the oppos- 
ing tendrils will wither and break from the false 
support, and the gardener's knife will not be 
demanded. In all dealing with wrong doing, 
with degraded and unawakened moral life, with 
vice and the grievous havoc of sin, we should 
first begin the constructive work of grace and 



2l6 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

love toward God ; fix some attachments heaven- 
ward, or at least arouse instincts and motives 
that are human rather than brutish. Get the 
human being on his feet working for his fellows, 
seeking the light, struggling for something higher, 
and feeling after God, as the wandering tendrils do 
for a support, if haply they might find Him who is 
not far from any one. But even God must have a 
hand held out for help that He may help, must 
hear a cry for love that His love may be conveyed, 
and an open ear before His truth can be commu- 
nicated. 

We are driven to prayer when earthly losses 
sunder our earthly ties, and then we hold harder 
by heavenly supports. Anguish which can receive 
no earthly consolation drives us to a heavenly 
comforter ; then, if we have not utterly cast off 
those divine connections, they will draw us to 
closer and more perfect union with the sources of 
spiritual life. 

How strong and full and free flows the life 
wdiich is by faith, when its tide is fed by constant 
trust and love and consciousness of the divine 
presence ! If we were to let it swell and pervade 
our nature, if we were to place no obstacle in its 
way, but drink in all its inspiring elixir, we might 
realize the promises of Christ ; we cannot forbear 
the conviction that this would be the logical result, 
the real lesson of the material universe, as the 



OUR DIVINE RELATIONSHIPS 21/ 

expression of the laws of God and His methods of 
work. The vital human attachments, from the 
foundation of the world, would pour their wealth 
of love and revelation into our hearts ; their 
sympathy from beyond the veil would be sensible 
to our souls in all the struggle of life. " We ask 
them whence their victory came t " the strength 
of their experience is communicated to us ; the 
invisible company of ministering spirits and a 
great cloud of witnesses would surround us as we 
go up to the heavenly places prepared for us. 

Behold with what a cloud 

Of witnesses surrounded, 
Our earth-life in its shroud 

And chrysalis is bounded ! 
Their asphodel they wave, 

Their lilies lift before us ; 
By cradle and by grave 

They wave their white wings o'er us. 

Angelic ranks attend, 

And radiant hosts are flying, 
Their ready help to lend 

For living as for dying. 
Our hearts are waxen gross, 

Our ears are dull of hearing ; 
Our eyes are dim and close 

To their divine appearing. 

Yet still they stand and wait 

At every golden portal ; 
By every opening gate 

With messages immortal. 



2l8 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

O God-awakened heart, 

Receive the heavenly vision, 
And make thy life a part 

Of that fair life elysian ! 

They whose human connections are all strong, 
self-forgetting, and helpful, cannot so easily be- 
lieve in God, in immortality, in the deathless- 
ness of the dead one whom they mourn ? No, it 
is not he who has died, but they whom he has left 
behind, their connections cut off, their loved one 
vanished, and no divine relationships to hold them 
to the life of the soul. They have indeed a terri- 
ble struggle to put out again from the indurated 
stems of earthly growth those tendrils they so 
relentlessly cut away when they dismissed their 
faith in God, destroyed their habit of prayer, dis- 
carded holy thoughts learned at their mother's 
knee, despised those tender yearnings of the 
divine spirit which beat so strenuously as they sat 
by the dying-bed, and threw away, at the com- 
mand of a materialistic philosophy, all the pre- 
cious communings of which they had dreamed ; 
then, indeed, was broken the golden bowl, and 
parted the silver cord. Can they recover and 
rebuild, and be born again into spiritual life ? 
Yes ; but not without cutting down and pruning 
all self-assertion, purging all pride of reason, all 
determination to arrange the universe for self. 
This is the distinctive epoch and preparation. 



OUR DIVINE RELATIONSHIPS 219 

The gate is narrow which now leads to life. 
It is hard to regenerate the proud spirit which 
feels that it can grow and fulfil the purposes 
of life without the divine relationships into 
which humanity may come. Deadly sin is not so 
great a barrier to divine possibilities of life as a 
heart which cannot repent, which cannot prostrate 
itself in humility ; which cannot be thrown, with 
all the forces of imploring desire and utter aban- 
donment of self and the world, upon those strands 
which hold it to a higher life ; then faith has a path 
over which it can send re-enforcements to the deso- 
late heart, the healing love of God flows into the 
wounded spirit, and its fibres are knit in cords of 
trust and hope, joining the soul to infinite sup- 
plies. 

We bless God that, through all necessary tribu- 
lation, through every unspared pang of growth, 
and every sharp and ' needed pain of pruning, 
through every sundering of ties too strong for 
our spiritual integrity, and the dissolution of 
every relationship which could not consist with 
our supreme relationship to Him, He has bound 
us so on the side of our Divine connections 
that death shall hardly change our consciousness ; 
because we rejoice in Him all the day, work in 
His strength and presence, and rest in Him, and 
know that when He who is our life shall appear, 
we shall also appear with Him in glory. 



220 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION- 

My daily round I tread 

On heights serene, 
And nightly lay my head 
On angel-guarded bed 
By love o'ercanopied, 

Felt, though unseen. 

"What matter how the task 

Employ my hands ? 
God makes the work His mask, 
So in His smile I bask, 
And find that when I ask 

The promise stands. 

I entered in the shade, 

Shrinking, alone. 
Let this cup pass, I prayed, 
When lo ! Christ stood arrayed. 
I could not be afraid : 

The darkness shone. 

"When in the fire of pain 

I agonize, 
If neither spot nor stain 
Shall from its purge remain, 
I'll covet it again, 

For sacrifice. 

And when to watch and wait 

Befits my soul. 
Some sweeter word than Fate 
Still keeps my heart elate, 
Gladly I trust my state 

To His control. 

Poised and sustained, I rest, 

"V\'hate'er betide. 
By life's hard duties pressed, 
My weakness all confessed, 
Stayed on a Heavenly Guest, 

And satisfied. 



OUR DIVINE RELATIONSHIPS 221 

It is all promised and prophesied in the first step ; 
the limitless fulness is potentially in the first point 
of contact. The beginning of the life-union with 
the divine insures progressive immortality. The 
path is ever ascending, ever brightening, the transi- 
tions are. almost imperceptible, the partition-lines 
between type and type are delicate and impalpable, 
but the change is an eternal one, from glory 
to glory. When the attachments with heaven 
are begun, a ladder is let down from heaven to 
earth, and the angels ascend and descend forever- 
more, our souls "run up with joy the shining 
way " from every duty, from every sorrow and 
trial, as well as from every delight, from every form 
of beauty, every chord of harmony, every ecstasy 
of living, every bounty of giving. We learn to 
retrace our path from every wandering and forget- 
ting, by the tear of penitence, by the sad task of 
confession, by deep abhorrence of our degradation ; 
through every loss and every yearning we find our 
approaches to God and angels opened. Gabriel 
comes to give us a message, as he came to Daniel 
praying; Jesus comes to say with voice celestial, "I 
will not leave you comfortless ; I will come to you." 

We see those who live in the full privilege of 
these divine relationships unafraid and at peace ; 
we see them reach the valley of death glad to near 
their home : they are in familiar and dear pres- 
ences ; every step has been a conquest over the hin- 



222 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

drances of this life, and no attachment to earth is so 
riveted as to withstand the growing strength and 
drawing force of their vital attachments to heaven ; 
even death is swallowed up in victory, and the 
human soul is free at last to break all its fetters, 
and escape from its darker and narrower environ- 
ment into the fuller life and glory of immortality. 

So the bursting seed of the plant sets free the 
embryo to its development of beauty ; so the 
quivering butterfly spreads its new wings to the 
summer air ; so the dragon-fly springs from its 
shattered case to a glorious vision of light and 
freedom. 

To the lower orders of animal life their own en- 
vironment seems the farthest reach of being ; the 
sphere beyond is to them unseen, and suggested 
only by their unconscious predilections, and the in- 
stinctive struggle and tendency toward the devel- 
opment which may lead them into its silent land, 
up to its shadowy verge, over its dreamy border. 
The margin of the unknown confronts us every- 
where, and we peer into the mists and clouds for a 
ray of light to reveal its realities. But only by 
our longings we learn to struggle toward it, till we 
throw out our tentacles of faith and have an 
anchor fast in its nearing line of separation ; then 
we grow surer as we feel every strain of the 
cable which holds us to its shores ; even the pull 
of all other attachments but strengthens this 



OUR DIVINE REIATIONSHIPS 223 

to the beyond, because it grows by every effort 
which it resists. So when we swing away at last 
from other moorings, we cleave to this which 
offers the richest and freest conditions of nourish- 
ment ; we grow to the demands of its life-forces, 
and increase our capability of receiving it. We 
change from grace to grace and from power to 
power ; for that is the method of evolution as God 
shows it in the natural world and in human life. 
The plane of our activities rises and broadens, 
the air is purer and more elastic ; we drink it in 
and are transformed into the life which is sus- 
tained by it, and adopt the relationships which it in- 
volves. While we wait for sight, and live by faith 
alone, we yet experience the emotions and assur- 
ance which sight might supply. 

" 'Tis by the faith of joys to come 
We walk through deserts dark as night." 

Shall we discredit this divine attachment we 
feel so strongly, because our organs of sense are 
not adapted to its recognition } Eye hath not 
seen, nor ear heard these things, because they are 
not cognizable to these functions ; but when 
some great awe strikes the soul through mighty 
works or processes of nature, then we become 
more conscious of the unseen than of the seen, and 
we know that it is the unseen which is most real. 
When we are overwhelmed by trouble and all the 



224 ^-^^ SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

earthly lights go out, when the darkness is thick 
and we know not where to look, we awake to the 
great reality of our needs, and God answers when we 
call. When the voices we love grow silent, and the 
voices of the world only mock our loneliness, we can 
utter with deepest truth of conviction, " Lord to 
whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eter- 
nal life." We know by a deeper than physical 
sense, and by a greater than material satisfaction, 
that we are rooted and built up in Him, and that if 
we will abide in Him, He will abide in us. We 
gravitate to Him. God is nearer than our wish, 
stronger than our needs, larger than our capacity. 
How those cords of attachment thrill with every 
heart-throb ! how they vibrate in the strong tide of 
love which sweeps through them ! 

We are possessed by the inspiration which come 
through those relationships. It is no longer we 
who work and will, but God who v/orketh in us. 
We hide in His bosom, and only seek to be the 
medium of His grace to others, to be a link in the 
chain of divine relationships, to minister between 
the seen and the unseen ; and so we begin to learn 
the spirit of Christ, and to be in our degree the 
way, the truth, and the life for man. And at last 
when ''safely moored, life's perils o'er," we reach 
that land for which our senses shall have bud- 
ded, we shall find the airs easy to inhale for which 
our structure and functions shall have developed, 



OUR DIVINE RELATIONSHIPS 22$ 

and shall be free to make all our attachments 
divine ; then with angels and archangels and all 
the company of heaven, with the dear ones who 
wait to welcome us home, with all who have 
passed out of this limited enviroment of earth, 
we shall still climb upward toward the perfect 
light and glory. 



EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF BOARD 
OF SUPERVISORS, 1889 



The welfare of our schools depends upon nothing 
so much as upon the fitness of its teachers for their 
work, each teacher having the responsibility of 
from fifty to sixty children. All the certificated 
teachers, both normal school graduates and those 
who have passed the Supervisors' examination, on 
receiving appointments become permanent teach- 
ers only after the final test of supervision. 

Of course the intellectual qualifications, both 
professional and general, make up an important 
element in a judgment of the fitness of a candi- 
date ; physical and personal characteristics also 
enter largely into the general estimate of the quali- 
ties of the teacher ; but above all, character must 
remain the vital and decisive element for consider- 
ation : the communicative force, the moral power, 
the virtue which continually emanates from the 
teacher, is the real moulding agency of our schools. 
No superficial qualifications, such as familiarity 
with methods and subjects of instruction, or fac- 

226 



REPORT OF BOARD OF SUPERVISORS 22'J 

ulty in manipulating machinery and attending to 
the details of class-work, can be regarded as in any 
degree a substitute for moral power and magnetic 
force of character in the candidate ; especially in 
the case of the male assistants, who by natural 
promotion may early become candidates for the 
position of sub-master or master, is the most con- 
scientious dealing imperative with the Supervisor, 
who must be helpful, patient, kind, frank, and 
faithful with the young teacher, but should never 
be betrayed into a course which would fix in our 
schools an unhealthful moral influence, or rivet a 
connection likely to hinder the progressive devel- 
opment of the young. 

If the child is driven to study, if he is forced 
to take up his lesson as a task, and obliged to at- 
tend to it for fear of penalty, we all understand 
that he is under a mode of government in which 
there is not the first element of growth and de- 
velopment, whether mental or moral. The child 
grows from within, outward ; the motive to study 
must spring from the natural desire to know, 
quickened by the presentation of the object of 
knowledge. The object must be within reach of 
the child's sympathy, comprehension, and natural 
curiosity, and must be so presented as to arouse 
that curiosity ; or, if the pupil is old enough to have 
discovered that he is dependent on the recorded 
observation of others for some facts he needs, 



228 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

then he should be stimulated to the possession of 
those results by appreciating their value to him in 
his preparation for life. A teacher who is full of 
his subject communicates unconsciously this en- 
thusiasm of interest and study. 

It is comparatively easy to learn when the desire 
is thoroughly aroused. Apprehension and memory 
respond quickly to desire. Other motives, such 
as love for the teacher and conscientious devotion 
to duty, may sometimes enter into the motive to 
study ; but the spontaneous desire to know will 
always spring forward toward any new subject of 
knowledge which meets the student's stage of in- 
telligence. So, in the mode of government, the 
motive-power must be an inspiration ; the teacher 
must start into operation some agency more 
radical, inclusive, and expansive than any exter- 
nal compulsion. The higher activities must be 
aroused, if not directly, yet through the interac- 
tion and correlation of other activities, beginning 
with such right activities as the child is easily im- 
pelled to ; for the child is a unity of diverse ele- 
ments, every one reticulated with every other ; 
and work of the hands makes easier work of the 
head and work of the heart, by the law of the dif- 
fusion of energy throughout every part of one 
organism. 

Also the laws which govern the physical nature 
are continuous in the realm of intellectual and 



REPORT OF BOARD OF SUPERVISORS 229 

moral growth. All structure grows by the exer- 
cise of its functions. We must, therefore, build 
up the moral nature by developing the moral ac- 
tivities. This is done by arousing the feelings and 
the will, and directing them into the right channels, 
as well as by giving moral ideals to the apprehen- 
sion. Besides all that has been done toward in- 
forming the moral nature in our schools, such as 
the religious exercises of the school, the silent 
influence of the character of the teacher, the max- 
ims of good morals, the memorizing of gems from 
the best literature, the reading of biographies of 
the wise and great, and the requirement of right 
behavior in the school-room, we now add pleasure- 
able and useful occupation of the child during the 
time of its school-hours. This is provided partly 
by supplementary reading, and partly by exercises 
connected with the regular lessons. But when 
these fail to interest or stimulate, what further 
can we offer for the child's moral growth } The 
department of elementary science is placed in our 
schools as one important means to that end. It 
brings the child into loving and thoughtful com- 
munion with nature ; it introduces him to the forms 
of wonder and beauty about him, and leads to the 
consciousness of the divine love and power which 
surround him ; it reveals to him the fatherhood of 
God and the brotherhood, not only of man, but of 
all created beings ; it cultivates his aesthetic sense, 



230 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

which is the connecting link between the intellect- 
ual and moral powers, and awakens in him those 
activities which express the functions of the soul. 
In addition to this observation of nature, which 
ministers to his sense for beauty, and thus opens 
the way to moral progress, we must also provide for 
the practical exercise of his constructive faculties 
and creative power, through various kinds of man- 
ual accomplishment which shall put him into help- 
ful relations with his fellows, thus offering right 
scope and opportunity for those stored-up energies, 
which will work evil, if not good, for a human be- 
ing, whether man or child. 

The science of pedagogy and the modern devel- 
opments of physiological psychology, with the light 
thrown by modern science upon the development 
of the race, and of the child as an epitome of the 
race, have all contributed to a change of method in 
education, which has been growing so rapidly into 
our courses of study and means of training as to 
bring about an entire change of front of our edu- 
cational forces. 

We recognize the fact that we are on our way 
from animal to human living, struggling with ani- 
mal propensities and lower organic tendencies, in 
our reach after the higher and truly human activi- 
ties, yet with a new and distinctive germ of evolu- 
tionary power within us. If we but glance at the 
material in our schools, — a heterogeneous mass of 



REPORT OF BOARD OF SUPERVISORS 23 I 

growing humanity, children of every nationality, 
of every social grade, of every form of political 
and religious inheritance, — we begin to under- 
stand the era in which we live, — the era of a vast 
phenomenal migration from the Old World into the 
New, from the old civilizations and barbarisms into 
new possibilities of growth, larger freedom of life, 
broader relationships, and from the mediaeval phil- 
osophy of education to the inductive methods and 
unobstructed outlook of the modern philosophy. 
When we comprehend this grand era of educational 
opportunity, we shall accommodate our educational 
resources more exactly to its conditions and its 
spirit ; we shall provide more intelligently for the 
half-awakened little human animal, now almost 
wholly within the grasp of his physical instincts ; 
we shall give him help to arouse his human ambi- 
tions, to stimulate his human interests, and to 
kindle into flame that little spark of Promethean 
fire which makes him human. By all that the child 
can be and do beyond what the young animal can 
be and do, we must lead him to believe in his hu- 
man superiority. We must give to our moral train- 
ing the benefit of the differentiation of man as a 
tool-using animal, and put tools into the hands of 
the children, that they may think their thoughts 
out into conscious completion, into tangible form, 
not only through the power of human speech, but 
the power of human handling and shaping, of fin- 



232 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

ishing and beautifying. A boy who takes a tool 
and produces something from raw material is so 
much the more a boy rather than a brute, and more 
likely than before to leave off brutish ways. To 
work with the hands is to be in process of evolu- 
tion toward humanity ; to embody a thought for 
the benefit of others is to be in progress of evolu- 
tion toward perfect humanity. To think is not 
merely to dream ; if the thought is not expressed 
it falls back into vagueness, and is not built into 
the mental or moral organism : it must be com- 
pleted, cleared up, expressed, and communicated, 
in order to contribute to intellectual or moral 
growth. The physical, intellectual, and moral 
steps are all on one road, in an ascending scale, 
but equally on the way to true and integral educa- 
tion ; there is no partition between them. To 
teach the fingers skill in order to give to the thought 
precision, to put high motive behind all expression 
in order to involve moral functions, and to learn to 
work for others through the exercise of distinc- 
tively human activities, is the way to better action, 
both mental and moral, and in that way lie the 
methods of manual occupation, of useful industries, 
of the cultivation of all human activities as step- 
ping-stones in educational progress. 

The present educational trend is the outcome of 
the philosophy of evolution. It involves the idea 
of harmonious development : the body, mind, and 



REPORT OF BOARD OF SUPERVISORS 233 

soul must act and grow together, not in identical, 
but rightly subordinated relations, in a harmony of 
degrees and attuned elements; the body as the 
medium and instrument of the mind, and both as 
the instruments of moral supremacy. Let the child 
think not only with his brain but through his fin- 
gers, and put his ideals and affections into his 
work, and we shall see him grow human, and 
develop into a moral agent, sloughing off the 
chrysalis of his embryonic stage, and taking to 
himself the birthright of his higher activities. 

This aspect of educational purpose and scope 
has governed this Board in dealing with the school- 
curriculum, in criticising modes of government, 
and in suggesting methods of intellectual and 
moral instruction. The mode of government espe- 
cially, as indicative of the whole educational spirit 
and outlook, has during the past year claimed our 
attention. The arbitrary and external method has 
lingered too long in many of our schools. It may 
be called the cave method, where light enters 
through but one narrow aperture, and all is repres- 
sion, limitation, and discouragement : it belongs to 
epochs of darkness and disintegration. We have 
observed school-rooms in our midst, under the 
shadow of this repression, where corporal punish- 
ment is but one feature of a mode of government 
that is artificial as opposed to natural, mechanical 
as opposed to inspirational, despotic as opposed to 



234 'THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

parental, and antagonistic as opposed to sympa- 
thetic. The monthly reports of the grammar mas- 
ters advertise but too obviously the prevalence of 
these effete modes of government as indicated by 
the number of corporal punishments, — a method 
of discipline contrary to the philosophy and spirit 
of an enlightened age, and the form of political 
government for which we must train the young 
American. 

We turn from these discouraging subjects of 
consideration to those schools which have found 
out better ways, and report their various plans with 
a great sense of relief that a high dominant pur- 
pose has been seized and used as a lever by so 
many of our masters to lift their schools into the 
light. One class-room, for example, is built upon 
the democratic idea of government, as far as pos- 
sible. It recognizes the first conditions of right 
government to be sympathy, mutual helpfulness, 
and a common aim. It enlists all its pupils in the 
best welfare of the school by delegating a tenta- 
tive authority ; the teacher at times gives the boys 
and girls a chance to try popular government. 
Participation in this governing power arouses a 
sense of responsibility which is very strengthening 
to the moral nature ; the school-room becomes a 
little republic, and assumes the administration of 
its own affairs, and the formulation and imposition 
of its own rules of discipline, which are usually 



REPORT OF BOARD OF SUPERVISORS 235 

more severe and more rigidly observed, even by 
the most unruly pupils, than the teacher would 
require ; the class thus makes and executes its own 
laws to very good purpose, and learns a practical 
lesson in civics, while developing a true manhood 
and womanhood. 

Different schools have their distinctive and char- 
acteristic modes of government. As illustrations 
of these various modes we may cite a few in- 
stances, which are not, however, to be taken as 
singular. One large grammar school of girls is so 
permeated by the paternal influence of the master 
that it is like a well-regulated home ; kindness and 
mutual consideration pervade its classes ; the 
teachers are like mothers and sisters, whom the 
pupils tenderly love and respect, rarely disappoint, 
and seldom disobey. In the primary school, the 
head teacher has long been familiar with the homes 
of the district, and visits them, as the kindergar- 
ten teachers habitually visit theirs ; she therefore 
understands the needs of the incoming classes, and 
can adjust her methods to them wisely. With 
more than twelve hundred pupils in a district 
where conflicting interests would be very likely to 
occur, no disturbance or jealousy arises, no pupils 
are withdrawn to private schools, and no division 
of feeling or lack of confidence has ever interfered 
with the general harmony and good-will ; because 
the animus of government has been so wisely lib- 



236 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

eral, and the administration so justly considerate 
of all the duties of every pupil, where every pupil 
is known in her going-out and her coming-in, and 
in all the obligations of her environment. In 
accordance with the general motive of this long 
beneficent policy, the home-building arts, sewing 
and cookery, were here early introduced, both as 
a means and as an end, as an educational and a 
utilitarian measure. The atmosphere of a true 
home transfigures the school ; the ambition to add 
to the safety and happiness of home is held up as 
the highest motive, which works itself out in 
blessing to the community from one generation to 
another. 

In another school there is built up an inspira- 
tional method of discipline, which, beginning with 
social and intellectual, rather than moral incentive, 
reaches all the ends of government with equal 
carrying power, because all the activities of the 
child are healthfully aroused and related. A ses- 
sion spent in its bright and airy rooms is an 
exhilaration to mind and heart. Boys and girls 
sit companionably in the same room, exchange 
courtesies, and are not hindered from any natural 
action that does not disturb others. The pupils in 
recitation express themselves eagerly, without 
fear of harsh reproof, and emulate each other in 
every exercise of mind and body ; there is hardly 
a sign of repression, and yet the essence of order 



REPORT OF BOARD OF SUPERVISORS 237 

pervades the whole body. The organization is com- 
plete, the communication of motive magnetic, 
and the whole school constantly alive and growing 
in every member ; enthusiasm quickens the pulse 
of the teacher, and lights up the faces of the 
children ; the joyous play of imagination and pro- 
ductive activity of thought are apparent every- 
where. The children cluster about the teacher in 
little groups at their reading or number lesson, 
and in their bodily movements express their alert 
posture of mind, their loving spontaneity of feel- 
ing, and the freedom of their natural impulse to 
know; "busy work" of various sorts gives pleasur- 
able excitement. Games and occupations akin to 
the kindergarten have stolen a march on the 
primary methods, and everywhere the thoroughly 
natural development of childhood and youth is 
toning up the morale of the school beyond the 
need of directly imposed discipline. The unity of 
the school in its aggregated presentation is per- 
fect ; the files from every room march through 
the corridors with the precision of well-drilled 
platoons ; military order is secured not by military 
authority, but by a genius for thorough organiza- 
tion and a corps cV esprit involving the willing and 
hearty co-operation of every member of the school. 
This great feeder of our high schools is growing 
so healthfully in all the old lines of work, and 
leading out so effectively in the new ones, that 



238 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

disaffection and germs of mischief are outgrown 
by the very law of healthful activity : the rest- 
less propensity for doing something is constantly 
satisfied ; constructive methods are building up 
body, mind, and soul harmoniously, and destruc- 
tive methods are left behind even the remem- 
brance of a necessity. 

A similar mode of government operates under 
a somewhat different motive of inspiration in a 
school which has been led to take hold of observa- 
tion and demonstration lessons in all practicable 
directions of natural science, under the leadership 
of an enlightened student of nature. Every de- 
partment of school-work is vivified by the enthusi- 
asm aroused in the study of minerals, plants, and 
animals. The results of this delightful experi- 
ment illuminate the studies of geography, lan- 
guage, number, and all branches of the old course, 
to give them new zest and greater thoroughness, 
and to wake up the interest of the child so health- 
fully as to communicate its momentum to the 
moral nature. The child thus becomes origina- 
tive and enterprising : he is surrounded in his 
class-room by the forms of life and beauty which 
he has gathered for himself ; he utilizes his spare 
time in arranging and providing for his treasures ; 
he acquires scientific habits of thought and skilful 
methods of work ; his hands and his eyes, his 
mind and his affections, are well employed ; his 



REPORT OF BOARD OF SUPERVISORS 239 

teacher is his friend and companion in and out of 
school hours ; he grows apt and zealous to learn, 
to express, to embody, and to communicate his 
fresh fancies and newly acquired facts ; he be- 
comes self-helpful and helpful to others, and so 
gets beyond the atmosphere of wrong thinking, 
feeling, and doing, and is moulded into right 
habits unconsciously by all this fine contact and 
conduct. The creative spirit evolved by this 
trainino^ leads the teachers also to find out new 
ways of presenting the ordinary branches of study, 
to unfold new patterns of method and forms of 
demonstration, and to become the most productive 
of educators. 

These modes of government may have been 
approximately reached in many of our schools : 
they are intangible, and hardly to be expressed by 
conventional statements, yet they are productive 
of the highest results ; they are radically opposed 
to the habit of governing by petty remonstrance 
or constant prodding and attacking the details of 
conduct ; they are rather conformed to the laws of 
a true pyschology, which show us that the con- 
scious will comes into play only in those channels 
of vibration which the unconscious will has opened, 
and that to start into activity some absorbing in- 
terest or dominant purpose will soon clear the way 
for the unconscious will, so that its operation will 
outstrip compulsion or even resolve, and bring into 



240 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

obedience every faculty to recognize effectually 
the most complex structure. 

In the ungraded classes the problem of school 
goverment is a still more difficult one. Some of 
these classes are made up of children of many 
nationalities : a fusing and unifying motive is at 
once essential ; we must Americanize them. As 
soon as they become members of our schools, we 
must remind ourselves and them that they are 
already and only Americans ; we must teach them 
to love the flag, to feel that they are bound to- 
gether by the strong tie of patriotism. We intro- 
duce them as early as possible to the study of our 
history and our institutions ; to this end we bring 
into all our schools some study of civil govern- 
ment, and of our American principles of free 
government, that we may turn out from the least 
promising of our schools loyal citizens, imbued 
with a sense of their civic obligations and political 
responsibilities. In the ungraded classes truancies 
are perhaps more likely to occur than elsewhere. 
Some teachers have been so illogical in their 
methods as to visit the returning truant with 
exasperating punishment, thus increasing the diffi- 
culty of reclaiming him. It has been found over 
and over again that a word of welcome, or an act 
of kindness, may do more to cure truancy than the 
last resource of penal authority. To give the 
ragged boy clean and whole clothing, to aid him in 



REPORT OF BOARD OF SUPERVISORS 24 1 

any way to present a respectable appearance, to 
give him a germ of self-respect, and to put confi- 
dence in him as a helper, will do more toward 
making him a faithful and manly pupil than any 
expression of scorn or rebuke, or any attitude of 
shame and disgrace. 

Experiments were undertaken in many classes, 
during the last year, of introducing some simple 
tools and manual training as an indirect means 
of moral training. Scissors and knives were fur- 
nished from private sources, to be used at the 
teacher's discretion, under the guidance of the 
Supervisor, and with the consent and sympathy 
of the master of the school. A new avenue of 
interest was opened to the most unresponsive 
and irresponsible pupils, which proved to be a 
way to an awakened interest in their regular 
work and right relations with the school. Per- 
haps the following direct reports from some of 
the teachers will best serve to justify the experi- 
ment : — 



REPORT OF THE TEACHER OF AN UNGRADED 
CLASS OF BOYS. 

" Last year our Supervisor gave us a dozen each 
of knives and scissors, as a sort of beginning in 
manual training, and as an incentive to good con- 
duct and good lessons. The class was a difficult 



242 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

one, composed chiefly of backward and peculiar 
pupils between eight and fifteen years of age, in 
a district where a large proportion of the charity 
of the city is expended. The boys looked for- 
ward with great pleasure to the privilege of using 
the tools two or three times a week after good 
conduct and diligent effort. Many times they 
would voluntarily remain after school to finish the 
articles begun. 

'' Among other things they made small easels 
and frames, toy tables and chairs, toy sleds, and 
boats with oars. One German boy developed great 
ingenuity and aptitude in working up his fancies 
into forms cut out of paper, cardboard, and wood, 
representing scenery, and forms of animal and 
vegetable life, as well as mechanical contrivances, 
such as windmills, etc. Sometimes maps were 
drawn on thick paper and cut out, or other forms 
were drawn on wood and cut out with the knife. 
The boys brought an abundance of soft wood and 
cigar boxes for material, as well as paper and 
cardboard. 

" The beneficial effect of this work on the 
pupils was surprising : whereas before there had 
been cases of truancy which were considered in- 
corrigible, and corporal punishments were of daily 
necessity, after the introduction of this work not 
a case of truancy occurred, nor was corporal pun- 
ishment once necessary." 



REPORT OF BOARD OF SUPERVISORS 243 



REPORT OF A PROMINENT PRIMARY-SCHOOL 
TEACHER 

" A generous gift of scissors for our children to 
use has been of great assistance the latter part of 
the year : it furnished us with a much-needed 
opportunity to illustrate the observation lessons 
in form and color. The children tire of match- 
ing a scrap of colored material to colors on a chart. 
If, in addition, simple forms of colored paper are 
given them to fold, cut, and paste, harmony of 
color, design, accuracy, neatness, industry, and 
attention soon follow. Tools indulge the young 
child in his first and most natural occupation, — 
use of his hands. While this instinctive desire is 
complied with, all his energies are concentrated 
upon it, so as to correct idle and mischievous ten- 
dencies, and he is instructed while fancying he is 
only playing. 

"Some of these features of work formed an ex- 
cellent basis for what we called ' Friday afternoon 
fun.' The children brought their mothers to see 
the pretty things made in this way ; and our rooms, 
once a week, were full of eager and sympathetic 
friends of the children. No extra time was taken 
for the work of paper folding and cutting ; but it 
proved a great source of delight to the children, 
by allowing them to make objects illustrating their 
observation lessons. Form lessons in drawing 



244 ^^^ SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

were also supplemented in the moulding of clay 
solids, and in paper cut and joined so as to repre- 
sent solids. We need more variety of material to 
prosecute this work; but under proper conditions, 
with wise direction, I feel sure great benefits 
will result from training little children to work 
with their hands." 

REPORT FROM A THIRD-CLASS PRIMARY TEACHER. 

''Near the close of last year I was supplied 
with a small amount of material, and thirty pairs 
of small scissors for paper-cutting, etc. I con- 
gratulated myself that with the aid of clay, peas, 
colored paper, colored worsted, and scissors, my 
children knew, by actual experiment, spheres, 
cubes, cylinders, straight and curved lines, and 
angles. 

"And not this alone; their artistic sensibilities 
were awakened by the arrangement (directed and 
original) of the bits of paper cut by themselves in- 
to desired forms, into the first elements of design. 

*' I used no more time in this work than is 
granted for this department in the regular ' Course 
of Study.' 

'' The time was spent profitably and pleasantly 
by both teacher and pupils. 

*'No time was lost in correcting this or that 
child. The little ones were happily employed, 
and there was no chance or desire for mischief. 



REPORT OF BOARD OF SUPERVISORS 245 

" The threat of depriving a child of its clay or 
paper-cutting was sufficient to bring the most 
wayward to terms. 

" I think all primary teachers, particularly third- 
class teachers, will unite with me in sincerely 
wishing that the happy time would speedily arrive 
when material necessary to carry on this branch 
of our work in a logical, thorough manner will be 
supplied." 

Much testimony has come to hand in cases 
of children of deficient intellectual development, 
whom the simple forms of manual training have 
been potent to arouse and stimulate. 

A boy of fourteen, unable to learn to read, was 
given a chance in one of the cookery classes. He 
took a lively interest in the matter, and not only 
became proficient in housework and cookery, but 
his awakened mind for the first time grasped the 
intellectual work of the school, and he made un- 
looked-for progress in his studies. Another very 
dull boy, much too old for the class he was in, 
became interested in paper-cutting, and applied 
his newly found energy to the regular school-work, 
so that he was able to take a step forward. Girls 
have been rescued from complete passiveness by 
the exercise of sewing, and the stimulus of accom- 
plishing something useful. 

But it is in the newer departures of school- 



246 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATIOM 

work that most of this responsibihty of interpret- 
ing courses of study, and indicating methods and 
standards, has been called for. The department 
of observation lessons and elementary science 
especially awaited this effort when the present 
Supervisor took charge of it. A very general 
demand was made by the teachers for indication 
of standards and elaboration of method. It be- 
came necessary for the Supervisor first to under- 
stand the wants of the school, by ascertaining 
what had been done, and to what extent the 
teachers were ignorant of its purpose and signifi- 
cance as an educational scheme, and of the 
proper mode of presenting it. It was found that 
very few understood it to be a rational mode of 
developing the child's powers according to psy- 
chological laws, and thus many lost sight of its 
purpose altogether. It soon became evident that 
its use in many schools was altogether mechani- 
cal, defeating its whole aim ; and that in many 
schools it was wholly ignored as a part of the 
course. Only in two or three schools had it been 
successfully and adequately undertaken. A very 
general complaint was made that no material 
could be obtained for its practice, and the whole 
work had a very discouraging aspect. 

The Supervisors' Report of last year included 
a statement of the gradually improved condition 
of this department during the two years then 



REPORT OF BOARD OF SUPERVISORS 247 

closed ; and now we are able to speak with still 
greater assurance of its growing firmness of tenure 
in the schools. The teachers are beginning to 
understand a kind of education which rests upon 
self-activity, and leads the child to the acquisition 
of knowledge by training the senses to complete 
observation. The next step in the interpretation 
of this course should be the apprehension of the 
educational value of expression, by which we mean 
not only formulating the results of observation in 
spoken or written language, but through any form 
of tangible demonstration. To this end the Su- 
pervisor of elementary science has prepared a 
manual for the instruction and assistance of the 
primary teachers, which has been adopted by the 
school committee, and ordered to be placed in 
the hands of the primary teachers and graduating 
classes of the normal school. The whole philoso- 
phy of this method of education is closely allied 
to that of the kindergarten, and makes, therefore, 
a vital connection between those schools now at 
the foundation of our public school system and 
the primary schools which they feed. 

It may be easily shown that the natural devel- 
opment of the child is by the exercise of all its 
activities, — not its mental activities alone, but its 
physical, mental, and moral activities, progressing 
simultaneously and harmoniously. The feelings, 
the will, the intelligence, and the physical powers 



248 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

act in concert in every natural effort of the child 
to acquire knowledge. The senses perceive, the 
feelings arouse, the will directs, and the hands work 
out and re-create the facts of knowledge in what- 
ever material is supplied : no knowledge is com- 
plete which is not demonstrated by some produc- 
tive activity. The study of form, size, color, plant 
and animal life, and physical phenomena of nature, 
which connects the child with the world about 
him, should be carried on not by passive observa- 
tion alone, but by the use of every sense, by the 
exercise of the imitative faculty so early developed 
in children, and by the exercise of the creative 
faculty, which involves manual training. This 
opens the whole subject of manual training in the 
elementary schools, which is waiting for an en- 
trance into our curriculum. The time is now ripe 
for the interrelation of all these departments, — 
observation lessons, elementary science, and such 
forms of manual training as carry up the kinder- 
garten methods into our primary grades. The 
harmonious connection of all grades of work and 
all branches of study is an end greatly to be 
desired in our schools, and very much at heart as 
an aim of the Board of Supervisors. Every modi- 
fication which can be made to break down the 
rigid partitions which threaten to distract the 
teachers with so many detached lines of work, 
instead of one inclusive and interrelated plan, is 



REPORT OF BOARD OF SUPERVISORS 249 

in the direction of true pedagogical science, and 
is constantly before this Board as a goal in every 
department. Harmony of method, as well as har- 
mony of spirit, is the only condition of right devel- 
opment, whether for the school-system or for the 
child. All organization rests upon harmoniously 
related activities, and the child is the type of all 
organisms in this respect. 

Sewing and cookery, as well as other depart- 
ments of manual training, present themselves in 
two aspects as parts of a school-course ; the first 
is an educational, the second an industrial aspect. 
As a preparation for practical usefulness these 
aspects run parallel with each other, and are both 
best subserved by laboratory methods. Our schools 
should prepare the boys and girls for active help- 
fulness in all the industrial interests of the age ; 
for we must fit them, not for some remote contin- 
gency, but for the work of life which they will be 
called to do at once, and should be led to respect 
and dignify. Labor of the hands should he hon- 
ored in our educational scheme ; mere money-get- 
ting, as an end of life, should not be held up as 
the highest challenge to ambition. Our theories 
of school instruction should lead out not only in 
the direction of purely intellectual success, but to 
a high standard of usefulness at home and in the 
community, and to the generation and interchange, 
not only of ideas, but of helpful activities, and the 



250 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

exercise of individual energy of every kind for the 
good of humanity. We therefore undertake to 
consider both aspects of these mdustrial depart- 
ments, which do not conflict but complement each 
other. From the educational point of view, we 
value them as training for the eye and hand, of 
the development of the sense of touch and the 
sense of measurement, and that training of all the 
senses which is the motive of the observation les- 
sons. In the preparation of garments, which has 
characterized our sewing instruction thus far, we 
will follow an educational principle which com- 
bines the moral activities of interest and sympathy 
with the physical and intellectual training, and 
produces a concrete and tangible expression of all. 
Both sewing and cookery in this light educate 
the moral nature by exercising it in a productive 
act for a useful object, or from an unselfish 
motive. And why should not some training in 
household duties be begun in the primary schools 
as it is in the kindergarten, — with the needle, the 
care exercised in handling all the material, in 
keeping every thing in order, in the careful 
arrangement of the room, even to the vase of 
flowers on the desk, and all the appointments of 
the social lunch ? In these ways the child may 
exercise patience, neatness, order, kindness, and 
the sense for beauty, so that the training of his 
moral nature shall begin to build up character. 



REPORT OF BOARD OF SUPERVISORS 2^1 

This end should never be lost sight of, for even in 
its utilitarian aspect, integrity of character — 
strictly the wholeness or sum of all right develop- 
ment — is the most valuable contribution which 
the individual can make to the Commonwealth. 

And it should be admitted that one important 
function of our school-system is to elevate the 
home-life, which is the fundamental unit of our 
national life ; also to prepare our children for 
their practical duties to the community as well as 
to the home. We educate them in all that fits 
them for business, why not for the natural indus- 
tries? We train them for useful citizenship, why 
not for useful home-building } Yet we cannot fail to 
remember that these specific directions of educa- 
tional development are all to be comprehended in 
one great, unifying purpose ; viz., to train the 
child for a well-rounded and progressive manhood 
or womanhood, and for character as the con- 
summate flower of culture. 

But we already prophesy that the so-called 
''manual training" is to be the connecting link 
between all our grades and departments of school- 
work. Self-activity in observation, thought, and 
expression, involving the functions of body, mind, 
and soul, is the key-note of this new harmony, and 
we shall endeavor so to mingle it in every chord 
we strike — 

" That mind and soul according well 
May make one music." 



ELEMENTARY SCIENCE 



We find the child continually applying his senses 
to the investigation of things about him. This is 
his best means of knowledge, and, more important 
still, his best means of growth. As he uses his 
senses they become more accurate, more search- 
ing, more active ; they tell him of the external 
world, and put him in communion with nature. 
He observes the rising and the setting sun, the 
clouds, the rainbow, the rain, snow, and hail ; the 
starry heavens with the moon and planets, perhaps 
the aurora lighting and adorning the shadowy 
night ; and he wonders and questions. He watches 
more closely, learns many details of these phenom- 
ena, and drinks in the order and beauty of their 
appearance. He can but inquire of their origin 
and movements, and his imagination, his awe, and 
his love to the Creator are awakened. His soul 
grows with the stirring of his thought, and he be- 
comes one with nature in his consciousness of 
creative and divine love. 

Or let the child walk amid the trees, play upon 

the grassy bank, run before the breaking wave, 

252 



ELEMENTARY SCIEIVCE 253 

or wander along the shell-strewn beach. He sees 
all things beautiful with growing life ; the birds 
and insects flying, hovering, and twittering, the 
flowers shedding their perfume and spreading 
their lovely corollas, the leaves and stems expand- 
ing, the lambs and kine in peaceful or merry bliss, 
the great hills lifting their verdured summits to the 
sky, and the rills and rivers hastening to the sea. 
What variety of form, of color, of motion, of uses 
and relations, he learns to recognize, if only allowed 
to wander and to dream ! They all become his 
companions, and help him also to grow and unfold, 
and lift himself toward the light in free activity. 
He is a poet and a seer. 

But if we feel it necessary to direct all this 
activity so as to secure more definite results of 
growth and knowledge, let us give the child a 
garden, and tools with which to work in it. He 
may dig, hoe, and rake ; he observes and handles 
the soil, studies the loam, the sand, the gravel, 
pebbles and rocks. He collects and arranges 
these things ; he compares one with another ; he 
sees how they are produced, and how they are 
related to each other. He examines the seed, and 
inquires about its conditions, its changes, and its 
purposes. He learns how plants grow, and how 
they behave ; he knows them not only by sight, 
but he takes them by the hand and makes their 
personal acquaintance ; he works for them and 



2 54 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

with them ; he partakes of the life of nature ; the 
contact and the work are healthful and strength- 
ening, and he grows stronger with every touch of 
mother earth. 

But if the child is not within reach of this free- 
dom of companionship and spontaneous study of 
outward nature, if we can secure observation only 
within the school-room, then bring in the seed, let 
him plant it, watch its germination and growth ; 
let him draw it, describe its various stages, express 
its color, and learn its processes of development by 
close observation. As the root and stem develop, 
let him watch every change, and investigate every 
process with some plants which he may uproot for 
this purpose. Lfet him study, as the season ad- 
vances, the leaf-forms and the structure of every 
part ; let him draw and color from the plant itself ; 
let him use it in design for artistic development. 
Let the child observe the relation of one plant to 
another, the relation of the plant to its environ- 
ment, and observe how it is adapted to the 
resources and requirements of its conditions. 
There are wonderful mechanical contrivances to 
assist fertilization and distribution, to water and 
nourish the root most effectually, to prepare for 
the growth and fruitage and the preservation of 
type, which he will be delighted to perceive. Even 
an unimaginative child will be glad to watch these 
features and provisions of growth, and his mind 



ELEMENTARY SCIENCE 255 

will be continually exercised therewith. Let him 
try to construct such machinery, and copy such 
designs, and manual training will do its legitimate 
work of supplementing the powers of observation. 

Give the child all the freedom of interest and 
selection possible. In all the variety of subject 
and multiplicity of detail for observation of plant 
and animal life, consult his taste and facility, and 
keep to one or two simple lines of study or analy- 
sis. Not too much analysis at first, and no drud- 
gery, should accompany the observation of nature 
in the school-room, because a sense of sympathy 
with nature is the highest end of such study ; the 
growth of the soul is the final object of all study, 
and the soul grows by exercise of its powers of 
love and aspiration. 

A class in the kindergarten planted the bean 
and the pea in the sand-garden, after they had been 
swollen in water ; then each dug up the ger- 
minated seed, planted and observed the start- 
ing of the root and plumule. Each child had his 
own specimens, which he alone had cared for, and 
each sat down to the study of the sprouted seed. 
On a bit of paper each drew the bean and pea in 
three stages ; viz., hard, swollen, and sprouted : 
each took off the skin of the swollen one as un- 
broken as possible, and examined its veining, then 
drew it ; at a later stage of growth other specimens 
were produced and studied in the same way, and at 



256 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

last the little plant with green leaves was drawn 
and colored. The drawings were free and un- 
cramped by rules or the timidity engendered by 
criticism. This was a beautiful method of study. 

There are many ways of assisting or stimulating 
the interest of the child, and one sure way of hinder- 
ing it ; too much system will kill it, too many facts 
given will paralyze it. Do not be too anxious to 
bring the child's discovery into line with that pre- 
conceived plan you call science, and do not aim at 
uniformity of result. Free, loving desire and sym- 
pathy with nature is the best result, in whatever 
way it arrives. Cultivate the powers of observa- 
tion through the medium of a spontaneous interest. 

The philosophy and method of this observational 
study of nature are given in the " Manual of Obser- 
vation Lessons " as follows : — 

Above all, the work should be free, and filled with life and feel- 
ing. It would be of the greatest value to put life and living 
forms and processes before the children in all these departments, 
in order to inspire a vital and lively interest, original investiga- 
tion, and creative production, always relating all parts of the work 
to each other, and to the grand inclusive thought of nature in the 
works of nature, which illustrate every idea that the teacher is 
striving to communicate to the child. 

The observation lessons for primary schools are for the training 
of the senses, in order to gain fundamental facts of knowledge 
through self-activity, to establish the child's relations with the 
world of matter, and to awaken his mind and soul. Through 
complete observation we lay the foundation of knowledge, which, 
by the assimilative power of the mind, is converted into active 
energy of thought, demanding expression in outward forms. 



ELEMENTARY SCIENCE 



2S7 



Observation should therefore be connected invariably with 
expression. 

Expression is the natural complement of observation and 
thought. 

No thought is complete which is not expressed. 

Every child has an impulse for expression, which should be fos- 
tered by the teacher. Expression consists in the embodiment of 
thought or feeling through some material form or external activity. 

Expression may be by the movement of the face, the eyes, or 
the body ; by words, both oral and written ; by industrial or artis- 
tic work in any material ; by music, and by dramatic action. 

Every child should be introduced to all forms of expression 
until his natural aptitude is discovered. Manual training gives fa- 
cility and skill in dealing with every variety of material for expres- 
sion, and is, therefore, a necessary preparation for all effort toward 
expression. 

The observation and expression lessons of a class should be so 
conducted as to involve the body, the mind, and the soul, of every 
child. Nature exercises these several functions in every act of the 
child's development. 

The physical activity of observation is in the use of the senses 
and muscles in acquiring information ; the mental activity of ob- 
servation is in the perception and intelligence awakened ; the soul 
activity is in the love, reverence, or joy which may be excited by 
observation of natural forms and phenomena, and communion with 
nature. 

The physical activity of expression is in the manipulation or 
bodily action exercised in production ; the mental activity is in the 
completion of the ideas resulting from observation, and in the 
exercise of the creative power of the mind; the soul activity is in 
the accompanying emotion of love, sympathy, or reverence, or 
in the conception of the ideal involved in expression. 

Any work of observation or expression for the child which 
omits any one of these functions is partial and imperfect, and so 
far a failure in educative power or completeness. 

The unity of the threefold nature of the child should be pre- 
served in every process of education. 

The observation lessons provide an opportunity to learn what 



258 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

the senses may tell, so that the mind may gain ideas ; the expres- 
sion lessons provide an opportunity to put these ideas into some 
form which shall communicate them to others : they should aim 
to make the child industrious, originative, and benevolent; they 
should contain as much of his individuality as possible, and busy 
him in productive work, either to express his ideals or his love for 
others, or to be helpful to others, — thus establishing his human 
and divine relationships. 

In this way, the child makes his connection with nature, with 
man, and with God, and develops symmetrically every part of his 
being. 

Training in observation, or training of the senses, increases the 
power to learn and the power to think; training in expression, or 
manual training, increases the power to think also, completing and 
defining the thought by giving it outward form, and impressing 
that outward form with its own originative impulse. Expression 
should always be associated with a moral impulse, that the exer- 
cise of the moral nature may produce moral strength. Thus the 
physical, mental, and moral nature of the child are all involved in 
the observation and expression lessons. 

The observation lessons are in furtherance of the natural ac- 
tivity of the senses which are the child's earliest and best means 
of knowledge, and connect him with the external world. 

The expression lessons are in furtherance of the natural activ- 
itv of the muscles in completing thought, and connecting the child 
with the world of matter and the world of mankind as a produc- 
tive moral agent. 

The observation work is an extension of the sensory nervous 
system, and conveys knowledge and ideas to the brain ; the ex- 
pression work is an extension of the motor nervous system, and 
connects the creative thought with matter again : the one receives 
what the material universe has to give; the other gives back to 
the outside world what it receives, plus the individual thought and 
motive which impresses it. 

We must aim to give the child complete and accurate knowl- 
edge through the senses, and to lead him to complete and accurate 
expression through his powers and means of expression. 

Both observation and expression should be as spontaneous as 



ELEMENTARY SCIENCE 259 

possible, but carefully trained under the direction of one who 
understands the laws of the child's development, and who offers 
to the child an inspiring sympathy as well as a responsive inter- 
est and knowledge concerning the subject of study and work. 
Observation, thought, expression : these include all the means of 
development which can be offered to the human being. 

DIRECTIONS FOR LESSONS. 

1. The observation and elementary science lessons have for 
their first object the cultivation of the powers of observation. 

2. The object to be studied should be in the hands of every 
child in the class, either for the whole or a part of the time of 
lesson. 

3. The object should be observed by the child, not only with 
one sense, as, for example, sight, but by every sense which may be 
applied to it with safety. 

4. The child should have an opportunity to see it under pleas- 
urable excitement of attention, and should be directed by the 
teacher's questions toward interesting and important points of 
observation. 

5. The object should be observed, not alone as a single thing, 
but as related to other things. 

6. The quality to which observation is directed should be dis- 
tinguished in a variety of things. The faculty of comparison 
should be developed from observation, by distinguishing the same 
quality in two or more objects, and noticing their likeness and 
difference. 

7. The faculty of classification should follow comparison, by 
teaching the child to arrange in groups objects having common 
qualities. 

8. The faculty of relating cause to effect and effect to cause 
should follow, involving the logic of structure and function in liv- 
ing forms, and of origin, history, and uses, in inorganic material. 

9. All the departments of elementary science should be con- 
stantly related to each other, in presentation, in observation, and 
expression, as far as possible. 

10. The lessons should not be made tiiesome by dwelling too 



26o THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

long upon one isolated point of observation, or by too much repe- 
tition. One fact gained, or one quality observed, will be con- 
stantly revived in successive objects of observation, and in its 
natural associations, so that it is unnecessary to attempt a tedious 
drill in each lesson. 

11. As far as possible, the class should help the teacher and 
each other in the conduct of the lesson, and be busy in a sponta- 
neous way about it, under the sympathetic control of the teacher. 

12. It is always well to seize upon some incidental occurrence 
or object of interest connected with the children's work or play 
for the subject of a lesson, and, whenever practicable (which is 
usually the case), allow the object to be contributed, or at least 
suggested, by the children or by one child. 

13. If the object of observation is a plant or animal, take great 
pains to have a living specimen, rather than a dead one ; and 
something familiar to the children, rather than unfamiliar. 

14. Make a few strong points in each lesson, and lead the chil- 
dren to see the relation between them, and wherein they are char- 
acteristic of the individual or the class which they represent. 

15. In studying a simple object, teach the child to regard it in 
its activity and motion, as well as at rest; showing what it does, 
as well as what it is. 

16. In studying the activities of natural forms, lead the child to 
discern the laws of those activities, and the results of resistance 
to those laws. 

17. Point out to the child's thought whatever symbolism lies 
hidden in any form or process of matter, as soon as he seems 
capable of perceiving it, and encourage him to reach out from 
the material to the spiritual. Trace the continuity of law in all 
processes, — physical, mental, and spiritual. 

18. Do not attempt observations which are too nice and com- 
plete for the child's comprehension at any stage of the work. 

19. Do not, at any time, present points of observation which 
are accidental or individual, so much as those which are inherent 
and general. 

20. Begin the training of expression in various ways as soon as 
clear observation is finished. 

21. Lead the child into various forms of expression, as they 



ELEMENTARY SCIENCE 26 1 

prove attractive and practicable, until he takes pleasure in a 
variety of expression. 

22. Language or expression may be in the form of oral or writ- 
ten words, drawing, moulding, and the beginnings of industrial 
occupation with every available material; written expression 
should be more and more required as the child matures. 

23. Combine industrial or manual training, as far as practicable, 
with all elementary ecience work. 

24. Attention from inherent interest, and not from outward 
compulsion, should accompany every lesson. 



FROEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL THEO- 
RIES 



ADDRESS AT THE SWAIiV FREE SCHOOL, NEW 
BEDFORD, 1882 



The doctrines of Pestalozzi entered radically 
into the system of Froebel. In contrast to those 
who base education upon authority, they based it 
upon the natural activities of the child. Froebel 
goes a step farther than his teacher in developing 
the child's personality. Both considered the child 
in the totality of his environment as well as in the 
totality of his powers. Froebel makes the child- 
take the initiative, calling into action his impulses 
and will as educational factors. He not only per- 
mits but arouses the child's originative as well as 
imitative faculties. He leads the child to make 
use of his material, as well as to observe it thor- 
oughly, for the apprehension of its qualities. He 
v/ould train the child to a full perception of nature 
as a foundation of formative work, in order to his 
widest culture and helpfulness. The impulse for 
active expression, the pleasure in inventing, the 
achievement of the thought through the will, is 

262 



FRO EB EL'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 263 

Froebel's addition to Pestalozzi's educational sys- 
tem. He furnishes thereby a counterpoise to 
acute and searching perception, to the investiga- 
tion of facts, to the struggle after truth, which 
gives rest and satisfaction to the mind and soul. 
He converted the childish instinct for play, which 
is nature's earliest training for humanity, into 
conscious action. Childhood should be before all 
things a time of happiness, and can be made so by 
encouraging natural activity, setting free the spon- 
taneous forces, and enabling the child to learn and 
act for itself, to see with its own eyes, to observe 
and attend rightly, to perceive and distinguish 
correctly, to compare, to contrast, to construct, 
and in every healthful way to give outward expres- 
sion to the inward self. Morality and virtue must 
be learned through doing ; the will must be 
strengthened by decision and action ; self-control 
must be acquired through experience. 

The destiny of a human being is to be the 
child of nature, the child of man, and the child of 
God. The young child is the mirror of the human 
race in its native development and utterance. 
The stages in the life of childhood correspond 
to the epochs of the progressive development 
of mankind. The education of children re- 
quires, therefore, a consideration of human na- 
ture in general, a consideration of the age in which 
they are living, a consideration of the personality 



264 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

of each individual, and a consideration of the law 
of human development. These fundamental ideas 
have been more or less approximated and expressed 
in different ages : they have been recognized by 
every great educator in the history of the world ; 
but in the relations in which Froebel presents 
them, and the applications he discovered for them, 
they are new and original. 

Before any great idea assumes an established 
form, it must have been thought out again and 
again by pioneers in its realm, each of whom has 
contributed something to it. Froebel's ideal of 
human education had been groped after and worked 
at for centuries by minds kindred to his own. 
Pythagoras made harmony with the universe and 
God the great aim of education ; knowledge of 
self, a search after the nature and cause of all 
things, perception of the order and beauty of the 
universe, and knowledge of all phenomena, with a 
well-regulated life, he regarded as essential re- 
quirements for this education. Solon prepared a 
system of education for the people which required 
every father to teach his own son to read as well 
as to learn some useful occupation, to train the 
body in harmony and strength, and to cultivate the 
mind. His method of teaching was largely by play. 
Music and drawing were the last accomplishments. 
Socrates was a practical educator, and gave his 
name to his method. He selected his pupils who 



FROEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 265 

accompanied him as disciples ; he had no school- 
room, and he took no compensation. His method 
of teaching was directed against self-conceit and 
superstition : it appealed constantly to the indi- 
vidual and independent reason, and exercised the 
mind by the friction of argument. 

" The wh*oIe group 
In orderly procession sallied forth 
Right onward without struggling, to attend 
Their teacher in harmonics. 
Their harps were strung a loftier key." 

Plato regarded the first three years of life as 
most important in education. He defined education 
as nurture. Children should be carried into the 
fields and temples in infancy ; the mothers should 
rock them and sing them to sleep ; nothing immoral 
should be shown or read to them ; they should be 
acted upon cmly by the beautiful and the good ; 
study should not be compulsory, but made pleasant 
and easy, as though they were playing ; their amuse- 
ments and games should be directed ; education 
should make a man good, and form noble 
character. 

Aristotle wrote a treatise on pedagogics. " Good 
education," he said, " consists in habituating man 
to rejoice or grieve reasonably, producing a healthy 
and well-cultivated soul in a healthy and well-cul- 
tivated body." Children should be guarded against 
bad example, and their teachers be carefully se- 



266 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

lected. In the first five years of life they shall 
play and exercise themselves in ways which shall 
illustrate their future occupations. In learning 
arithmetic, the boys practised by distributing 
apples ; in reading, by transposing letters ; in geog- 
raphy, by tablets on which the countries were 
marked ; in geometry, by drawing on the sand. 
From concrete to abstract was the method. 

Ouintilian said that even for elementary instruc- 
tion the most skilful teachers should be provided. 
He taught reading by teaching the names of things 
together, instead of by the letters. He gave the 
child that which pleased him to play with, and 
that he could examine, handle, and name. He 
would teach every child according to its natural 
disposition and capacity, and did not allow whip- 
ping. How close was the ancient doctrine to that 
of Froebel in many things ! 

After the mediaeval darkness came Erasmus. 
He taught that before the seventh year all learn- 
ing was to be acquired through play, and the dis- 
cipline to be mild. His maxims were : Words 
before things ; the education of girls as important 
as that of boys ; reverence inculcated by observ- 
ing the splendor of the heavens, the richness of 
the earth, the boundless sea, and all the wonders 
of nature. 

Bacon said, '' Take the lock to pieces and ex- 
amine its mechanism, and then make a key to fit 



FRO E BEL'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 267 

it." ** Clear the mind of systems and theories, and 
then interrogate nature." He struck at the root 
of the tree, and revolutionized methods of thought. 

Raticke directed that teaching should always be 
from the concrete to the abstract. He says, '' In 
all teachino; follow the course of nature." '' Teach 
only one thing at a time." " Learn without com- 
pulsion." ''Learn nothing by rote." "Teach 
everything by experiment and inquiry." 

Comenius wrote several books on education, and 
is one of the greatest lights in the history of edu- 
cational science. The following sentences suggest 
his philosophy. Man can only become man by 
education. Schools are the workshops of human- 
ity, building men. All subjects of study must be 
proportioned to the age and capacity of the stu- 
dent ; the matter must precede the form, the con- 
crete before the abstract, details before principles. 
Do not force children to study, but arouse their 
enthusiasm for learning, and make it as easy and 
natural as possible. Combine learning with play, 
and avoid teaching what is useless. No corporal 
punishment. Children should have pictures and 
models, and see the use of what they learn ; they 
should study, as far as possible, from the heavens 
and earth, rather than from books. Have one 
teacher for each class of ten. 

Comenius established the mothers' school in 
every home for the training of the senses ; the 



268 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

national school in every parish ; the gymnasium in 
every large town, and the university in every coun- 
try. His system comprised the germs of all our 
improved methods. 

Montaigne, Rabelais, and Rousseau added their 
distinctive thoughts to the growing science of edu- 
cation. All their free methods entered deeply into 
the system of Pestalozzi. Pestalozzi resolved to 
raise the fallen, and '' live like a beggar, in order to 
teach beggars how to live." He said, ''I will put 
the education of the people into the hands of the 
mothers." He tried to reform the whole science 
of education. He was the first teacher who be^ 
lieved undoubtingly in the power of love and 
sympathy. 

Froebel says, " The Pestalozzian method sets 
man forth on his endless path of development and 
culture, bound to no time and no space ; a develop- 
ment to which there is no limit, no end." 

But not until all these gleams of light were 
focussed in the mind and soul of Froebel, did they 
kindle into the flame of genius. Fused in that 
fire, they became a scheme, formulated, harmo- 
nized, and expressed. Froebel was the first to 
construct a plan by which the free, spontaneous 
activity of childhood is regulated in the same man- 
ner as the whole natural world unconsciously is, 
and as the world of human nature would always 
be, were it not for the disturbing element of the 



FRO EB EL'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 269 

personal will, which comes in conflict with the 
laws of nature. It is the first system which, after 
discovering, follows the inherent law of human 
development, — the complete growth and balance 
of all the natural powers. 

Froebel's educational philosophy has its mystic 
side, which makes it incomprehensible to some 
minds. His symbolization sometimes seems fan- 
ciful, and its tendency unpractical ; the analogies 
by which he inculcates truth are sometimes vague 
and hidden, and some minds recoil from them as 
from a dream or fantasy. Much of what he speaks 
is outside our clearly outlined understanding, as 
the Greek idea of harmony and quantity is still 
vaguely comprehended. Froebel's mind, in many 
ways, was of the Greek type. He reverenced the 
subtle laws and processes of nature, and made 
them a constant appeal in his educational deduc- 
tions. As a child of nature he connected man 
with all the elements of creation, even the inor- 
ganic ones ; he saw him as a part of the earth, 
subject to its laws, coming from and going back 
to it, always in contact with it ; his earthly life an 
outcome of physical nature, whose every product 
stands in close relation to him. Everywhere is 
going on a perpetual interchange of material. 
The magnetic forces of the earth, its tides, its 
heats and colds, its depressions and elevations, all 
its pulsations and fluctuations, are mirrored in the 



2/0 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

earthly life of man. Men are bound up with one 
another, all generations together ; for, from first 
to last, the great Chemist has fused them, made 
them the elements of the atmosphere, tied them 
to mighty planets, crystallized them m gems, 
smelted them in ores, built them into all the king- 
doms of nature. In all these transformations, one 
and the same law governs every atom and every 
star. The full understanding of all man's analo- 
gies and correspondences with nature, and with 
the mighty influences of the divine nature which 
enspheres him in its immanency, as well as in its 
transcendency (for God is man's environment), 
may well occupy his immortal life. The eternal 
search after these secrets leads us on to the solu- 
tion of that mystic symbolism which interprets 
man to himself. 

As a boy, Froebel would lose himself in pro- 
found meditation upon the laws of the universe, or 
the cause of organic life in nature. " From star- 
shaped blossoms," he says, " I first learned to 
understand the law of all formation, and it is no 
other than the reconciliation of opposites. For 
example, each of the petals which form the corolla 
within the calyx, has another petal opposite it, 
and between these opposite petals there are others 
which connect them. A humble little flower 
taught me dimly to suspect the secrets of exist- 
ence, the mysterious law of development which I 



FROEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 2/1 

afterward learned so clearly." He perceived, also, 
that one part is always sub-related or super-related 
or correlated to another, and in all organic life 
there exists a segregation and an aggregation ; 
also the different parts, by means of connecting 
transitions, make up a harmony of the whole, 
unity as the sum of infinite variety. He saw this 
reconciliation of opposites in the animal body, also 
in the crystal forms of minerals, and that all these 
separate kingdoms have points of transition by 
which they interchange, one feeding the other, or 
both joined by a more intimate unification, as in 
the chemical process. He perceived this law car- 
ried out through the universe in the greatest as 
well as the smallest organisms, in the spiritual 
as well as in the material world ; and this unity of 
development through the reconciliation of oppo- 
sites, he discovered to be the one fundamental law 
of the universe, out of which all other laws for the 
world of inner as well as outer phenomena spring. 
In the life of the human soul the same continual 
adjustment of opposites is repeated for the unity 
of life. God, nature, and man, an inseparable 
whole, nowhere completion but the eternal devel- 
opment of all things, continual resurrection, and at 
the bottom of this, all-pervading law, an all-work- 
ing unity conscious of itself, an eternal personality 
which is God. 

As a child of nature, man is a fettered, undis- 



2/2 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

ciplined being, striving for self-mastery. His 
powers can be unfolded gradually, in uniform and 
definite order, . in accordance with a law whose 
symbol is a circle, having unity for its centre and 
diversity for its circumference. This beautiful 
circle or symmetry of development demands activ- 
ity as its condition, and this must be regulated and 
organized, and the surroundings wisely adjusted, 
that the balance of growth of the faculties may be 
preserved. 

As a child of man, the young citizen of the 
world enters the realm of freedom, self-knowledge 
and- conscious personality. He cannot wholly es- 
cape from his inheritance, yet he must struggle 
to become master of himself as well as of outward 
nature. Man alone is compelled to mount by his 
own exertions, through many errors, to the heights 
of his aspiration ; but in all that he does or pro- 
duces, nature must show him the pattern. These 
patterns are to him symbols of truth, visible signs 
of the invisible, until he becomes capable of 
immediate apprehension. 

In the play of children we see the nature of 
mankind expressed. Its past and future life 
passes unconsciously through the soul of the 
child, groping to find the leading-strings of the 
labyrinth which leads to the fulfilment of the pur- 
pose of his being. There is no art which is not 
instinctively attempted by children in their plays, 



FROEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 273 

and with these rudiments, the first germs of 
science show themselves in the desire to know. 
The child says continually, why ? how ? To fash- 
ion himself, to fashion the world, is the task of 
the individual as well as of humanity. The first 
utterances of the child are movements ; all develop- 
ment must go on through movement, and physical 
development takes the lead. The child thrusts 
out its limbs, runs hither and thither, touches, 
handles, examines everything with restless hands, 
and is driven by his impulses, which are nature's 
agents, in the education of its bodily powers. 
The organs of the body must have developed to 
a certain extent before they can serve as instru- 
ments for the mind. When the child has ac- 
quired the use of its limbs and senses, it will 
begin to make all manner of experiments out of 
its newly awakened desires to know. It knocks 
objects together, tastes them, tears them to pieces, 
and by hundreds of experiments searches out 
their nature and uses. Then he begins to com- 
pare one thing with another, and arrives at a 
perception of size, form, color, number, etc. In- 
struction in observation must furnish answers to 
his inquiries. How brightly his eyes will sparkle 
at every fresh discovery ! He occupies himself 
with the relations of space, size, and number, just 
as mankind began with a knowledge of nature 
gained by observation and experiment, and lead- 



274 ^-^^ SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

ins: to mathematical conclusions. As a child of 
man, the young human being also has an instinct 
of fellowship. He does not like to be alone. He 
wants the society of his own kind, and should be 
with children of his own age. The family ties 
illustrate for him all larger social relations, and if 
they are strengthened, all his right relations to 
man are strengthened ; for in the love of his 
family, his relations to father, mother, brother, and 
sister, all his relations to man and to God are 
incipient. His mother's love is the pattern and 
symbol to him through life of the purest and -ten- 
derest love, the love of God. All the conscious 
utterances and aspirations of man have risen out 
of unconscious ones, and every conception of the 
mature mind has its root in some blind impulse of 
unconscious childhood ; everything ascends from 
symbols to ideas, and as Pestalozzi says, " There 
is nothing in the mind which has not passed into 
it through the senses." 

But education must hold out to the instinctive 
feeling and activity of childhood the necessary 
guidance, and the fit material to work upon. The 
problem of the world is an educational one, the 
solution of which is proceeding according to fixed 
divine laws, and must follow the plan of nature. 
The young child without forethought, conscious- 
ness, or artificiality, exhibits the systematic regu- 
larity, the logic of nature's development process, 



FROE BEL'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 275 

just as the simplicity of the common wild plants 
shows the plan and working of nature more clearly 
than the complexity of the cultivated plants. 
Through the utterances of childhood we arrive at 
the key-note of the natural order of child devel- 
opment ; methods of education should therefore 
follow the systematic plan which nature follows, 
and the outward practical means must correspond 
to its demands. In plants and animals we see the 
influence of cultivation very plainly, and it cannot 
be doubted that the higher the culture of a people 
has risen, so much the higher endowments will its 
children bring with them into the world. 

As a child of God, the child forms his concep- 
tion of that unseen fatherhood through the ideas 
gained from the knowledge of his own father and 
mother, and from an instinctive inquiry into the 
origin and sustenance of all things, through his 
tendency to look for a cause and aim commensu- 
rate with the diversity and beauty of the phenom- 
ena presented to his senses ; the growth of his 
spiritual nature is the highest outcome of the 
general laws of development. The moral forces 
of the soul must be dealt with in a manner 
analagous to the cultivation of the intellect. A 
merely instructional method is inadequate to the 
task. The new method of education must be 
able to determine the pupil's course of life by 
infallible rules. Froebel's observation of the 



2/6 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

human soul are in accord with the general results 
of modern psychology. The importance of his 
system lies chiefly in its practical side, which has 
to do with the cultivation of the feelings and the 
will. Froebel has discovered means for disci- 
plining and developing the will, feelings, and soul, 
as well as the mind and the body. The most 
important relation at the commencement of life 
is that between the child and its mother ; there- 
fore, he wishes first, like Pestalozzi, to address 
and train mothers, and *' The Mother's Plays and 
Songs " are given by him as the foundation of his 
educational plan. Froebel himself says of this 
*' Mutter und Koselieder " book, *' I have here 
laid down the most important part of my educa- 
tional method : this book is the starting-point of 
a natural system of education for the first years 
of life ; for it teaches the way in which the germs 
of human dispositions must be nourished and fos- 
tered, if they are to attain complete and healthy 
development. Whoever has grasped the pivot 
idea of this book, understands what I am aiming 
at," he says. The examples given in the '' Mutter 
und Koselieder" are psychologically based on the 
instinctive life of the child. The nature of babies 
and young children is still much less considered 
than that of plants and animals, but no one has 
come up to Froebel in his searching analysis of 
every phase and detail of their development. 



FKOEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 277 

Following the example of modern science, he 
studies the least phenomena, goes back to the 
smallest beginnings, and thus finds the law which 
lies at the root of all systematic development. 
A new basis has thus been given the science of 
education, and all parents or guardians of infancy 
are called upon to contribute to this science by 
giving the results of their own observation of 
child-development . 

The period of the first six or seven years of 
human life is regarded by Froebel as the one in 
which the germs of all knowledge and action are 
set. It is confided to the mother. The trainins: 
of mothers and governesses is consequently the 
starting-point for the complete carrying out of 
Froebel's system. The true development of woman 
in all classes will best be accomplished through 
their training for the educational calling, seeing 
that nature has pre-eminently endowed them for 
that work. Human culture in all its branches is 
reflected in the instinctive activity of the child, 
and responded to by the instinctive sympathy of 
the mother. " Come, let us live with our chil- 
dren," is the rallying cry of this new gospel of 
education. '' Mother, and you who take the place 
of a mother," says Froebel, '' do not say that your 
child is yet too young. Too young ! do you know 
when and where and how the spiritual develop- 
ment of your child begins? In God's world, just 



2/8 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

because it is God's world, created by God, is ex- 
pressed a constant law that is undivided, contin- 
uous in all and through all. O mother, never 
forget this ! instruct your child in the great cohe- 
rence of life, and in accordance with its simple 
laws. The mother, the mother-love, the whole 
nature and being of the mother, and her inner 
union with the child, is the only starting-point, the 
purest fountain, the surest foundation of a careful 
human education. It is only the mother who in 
her devout thought and spirit, in her union with 
God, with equal love for both sexes of humanity, 
can early grasp and comprehend the individ- 
uality of each. And thus in the first child-tending 
appears a loving, confiding, faithful spirit, with 
reliant effort and devout thought, — in union with 
God. 

Froebel took the child from the school, from the 
home, into the garden, into the free air, into the 
intimacy with plant life, into the world of beauty 
and peace with outward nature. He lets the dear 
old nurse Nature teach him by the rippling brook, 
by the wind-chased clouds, by the flowers, and by 
the insects, by the singing and the nested birds ; 
and thus taught, he gains an indomitable belief in 
the divine spirit, an immutable trust in the fatherly- 
care of God. He interprets for them the symbolic 
language of nature. "All things are parables," 
said Goethe. Outward phenomena have more to 



FROE BEL'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 279 

do with the spiritual perceptions than with the 
bodily senses. Our best learning is unconscious : 
the voices of wind and water, color, form, and sound 
are our best instructors, and convey to the soul its 
truest nourishment. Even young babies should 
be brought into contact with the elementary forces 
of nature, and spend the greater part of every 
seasonable day in the open air. Froebel strove to 
attach to his work at all times the agency and in- 
fluence of women, and organized young women 
into classes for special training, everywhere pro- 
claiming women to be the true educators of the 
race, and that in fitting themselves for their mis- 
sion as teachers, they would most directly and 
effectively improve and elevate themselves. He 
exalted the idea of the mother, and recognized the 
real motherhood of those who gave the mother- 
love and care to children not their own. 

He would educate the mother and all who fill 
the place of a mother by consecration and initia- 
tion into an intelligent system of early education. 
He believed the art of teaching to be the highest 
art, and that in no way could one educate himself 
so well as by educating others. Froebel would 
dispense for some time with all printed manuals 
for the child, and find in the natural activity, the 
play-impulse, the motive and method of all mental 
and moral as well as physical growth. While he 
agrees with Pestalozzi that the home and the 



280 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

mother are the God-indicated place and protection 
of the child, he yet believed that the child should 
have short periods each day of social companion- 
ship with other children, under the regulation of a 
wise and sympathetic guardian. He relies on the 
intuitive method in teaching anything new, and 
goes beyond mere inspection and handling, to 
actual doing, to real experience of knowledge, thus 
laying the foundation of every common occupation 
of life. He utilizes the child's instinct for motion 
and construction, to develop those aptitudes which 
make the artist or the- artisan, so that uncon- 
sciously, by organized play and occupations, a 
habit of productive labor for just and benevolent 
ends is formed in childhood. 

Froebel also believed in national education. 
His fundamental idea is to educate man to free- 
dom ; he who can develop himself is free. A 
people to whom this possibility arrives may be 
called a happy people. In his last address, he 
said, — 

" I have the pleasure of presenting to you an idea 
which is great and holy ; an idea whose realization 
must lead to the happiness of man. Fate decided 
upon me, and chose me for its bearer beforehand. 
It showed me the importance of an education con- 
formable to nature, by giving me bitter experience 
and privations, while the early loss of my mother 
threw me upon self-education. What one has 



FROEBEL'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES, 28 1 

been obliged to contend with bitterly, he wishes 
to soften to his fellow-men. Thus, the necessity 
of self-education led me to the education of my 
fellow-men. To strive for this is the aim of my 
life, and will be my companion to the grave. 
Make allowance for my personality, and cleave to 
the cause, for the cause is great and important." 

Froebel says elsewhere, — 

" Education must lead the child, must lead man, 
to unification of life in all directions, to full unifi- 
cation with his kind, with society, to the greatest 
possible union with nature and her laws, to indis- 
soluble union with the principle of all being, the 
alpha and omega of life, — with God." The 
corner-stone of his scheme is the family : "light, 
life, and love," he calls it; "love, the mother, 
being the centre, as the heart is the centre of life : 
hence, the vast significance of human mother- 
hood." Froebel instituted, if we may say so, the 
science of motherhood. He called the kinder- 
garten a high school for mothers. " Here they 
learn the science of childhood and the art of lead- 
ing into true manhood and womanhood. Once 
a week, mothers and elder daughters assembled 
for consultation and instruction ; freely, without 
reserve, they discuss measures and methods, ex- 
change experiences and views, or listen to one who 
comes to them freighted with the suggestions and 
observations of many ; till, by the inductions drawn 



282 THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

therefrom, they learn wisdom and enthusiasm for 
the highest concern of womanhood, which is the 
highest concern of humanity." 

Froebel's philosophy is the philosophy of the 
universe. His method is God's method of human 
education, reconciling liberty and law, and hang- 
ing all issues upon the two commandments, " Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind, and 
with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, — and 
thy neighbor as thyself." 

To this formula of life and growth, enunciated 
by One than whom no diviner teacher ever trod 
this planet, who set forth the child as the real 
kingdom of heaven, who taught in parables the 
all-embracing truths of nature and of life, who 
said, '' Consider the lilies, how they grow," and 
*'Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without 
God's knowledge," " Ask, and ye shall receive," 
— to this formula, and these inspired maxims of 
the great Teacher of the world, we are hastening 
in the spirit of our new ediication. 



T eacher's ♦ f\V 



T-^:.^,:^-^:^-- -- mETHODS ••• 

••• AND A1D3 



GESTURES AND ATTITUDES 

An Exposition of the Delsarte Theory of Expression. By Edw'd. B. Warman, 

A.M., author of "The Voice, How to train It, How to care for It," etc. 

With over 150 full-page illustrations by Marion Morgan Reynolds. Quarto, 

cloth, $3.00. 

When a man who, besides a thorough knowledge of his art, possesses natural 
ability as a teacher, writes a book on this subject, one anticipates not only a thor- 
oughlv reliable, but also a thoroughly practical work. In his treatise on Gestures 
a7id Attitudes, Professor Warman has not disappointed us, and just as far as such 
work can be made practical he has made tliis one so. The ideas of Delsarte arc 
presented in words which ail may understand. It is explicit and comprehensible. 
No one can read tliis book or study its one hundred and fifty graceful and graphic 
illustrations without perceiving the possibility of adding strength and expression 
to gestuies and movements, as well as simplicity and ease. 

THE SWEDISH SYSTEM OF EDUCATIONAL GYMNASTICS 

By Baron Nils Posse, M. G. Graduate of the Royal Gymnastic Central Insti- 
tute of Stockholm. Formerly instructor in the Stockholm Gymnastic and 
Fencing Club. Quarto, 264 illustrations. Second Edition, Revised, $2.00. 
The Swedish System while including exercises on apparatus, differs from other 
systems bv its independence of apparatus, its movements being applicable to 
whatever may be at hand, and its free standing exercises are such as no appara- 
tus can take the place of. Cheapness, compactness, adaptation to a great variety 
of movements, and to the use of many persons at the same time, are the advantages 
of the Swedish apparatus. Baron Posse's treatise, which is the only comprehen- 
sive handbook of Swedish Gymnastics in the English language, has 241 illustra- 
tions. Chapters on physiological effects of exercise, and the muscular activities 
in the bodily movement's, add to the value of the work, which is so arranged as to 
meet the wants of professional teachers familiar with other forms of gymnastics, 
and the general public — Alexander Young, in The Critic. 

THE VOICE 

How to train It, How to care for it. By E. B. Warman, A. M. With full-page 
illustrations by M.^rion Morgan Reynolds. Quarto, cloth, $2.00. 
The book is intended for ministers, lecturers, readers, actors, singers, teachers, 
and public speakers, and the special conditions applicable to each class are 
pointed out in connection with the general subject. The use and abuse of the 
vocal organs is considered, and their legitimate functions emphasized as illus- 
trated by their anatomy, hygiene, and physiology. The breathing and vocal exer- 
cises for the culture and development of the human voice are made clear by 
diagrams as well as descriptions, and the fruits of the author's long experience 
as a teacher are embodied in this eminently practical treatise. — Critic. 

AN HOUR WITH DELSARTE 

A Study of Expression, by Anna Morgan of the Chicago Conservatory. Illus- 
trated by Rosa Mueller Sprague and Marion Reynolds with full-page 
figure illustrations. Quarto, cloth, $2.00. 

This beautiful quarto volume presents the ideas of Delsarte in words which all 
may understand. It is explicit and comprehensible. No one can read this book 
or study its twenty-two graceful and graphic illustrations witliout perceiving the 
possibility of adding strength and expression to gestures and movements as well 
as simplicity and ease. Mr. Turveydrop went through life with universal approval, 
simplv by his admirable "deportment." Every young person may profitably 
take a hint from his success, and tliis book will be found invaluable as an 
instructor. — Woman s Journal, Bostoti. 



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r 



00l2S-^ 



lllllilllllDlillininimiimmimmi 



FOR 
THE 



TEflCHER'8 W orkshop 



iVlETHODS AND AIDS IN TEACHING GEOGRAPHY 

By Charles K. King A.M. Head-master of the Dearborn School Boston 
Price $i.6t net 

" This is a work independent of any geography, and may be used by teachers 
equally well with any of the authorized text-books. The numerous illustrations 
in this volume are of a practical nature, being generally diagrams, charts, and 
simple devices, such as a teacher may easily draw upon a blackboard to illus- 
trate the teaching of geography, and the book will be received as at excellent 
addition to the aids which modern instructors desire in their work." 

EXCELLENT QUOTATIONS for Home and School 

For the Use of Teachers and Pupils By Julia P. Hoitt Deputy' Super- 
intendent of Public Instruction State of California Cloth 75 cents net 

" Contains choice excerpts from the productions of eminent authors, at horn? 
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biographical eulogies, patriotic selections, recitations for yoimg pupils, and 
several pages of proverbs, give this book a secure place in the home and school." 

CHIPS FROM A TEACHER'S WORKSHOP 

By L. R. Klem.m Ph.D. late Superintendent of Public Schools Hamilton. 
Ohio Cloth $1.20 net 

" This work is among the first we have ever seen that puts the young teacher 
on the right track and keeps him there through all the departments of his work. 
It is ihoroughout based upon common sense. It teaches principles, but the 
principles are always presented concretely in a form to be understood. This is 
really the teacher's 7'nde inecicm. If it could be put into the hands of every 
instructor in our public schools, it would work a revolution in our methods of 
education and in the results achieved." — School jfonrnnl. 

Dr. Klemm has now in preparation, nearly ready for publication, his second 
volume, entitled " Chips from Educational Workshops in Europe." 

FIRST STEPS WITH AMERICAN AND BRITISH AUTHORS 

By Albert F. Blaisdell A.M. author of " Study in the English Classics" 

"Our Bodies and Hov/ we Live" " How to Keep Well" " Child's Book 

of Health " Cloth 75 cents net 

" The plan of the book is unique, attractive, and thoroughly philosophical. 

In a general way, the plan is to study the text of a few representative authors, 

and not merely to read about many authors. It is to study wliat great authors 

have written, and not what some one has written about them. Every thing is 

made subordinate to this great aim. In the first few chapters, the method of 

studying a given subject is fully explained and illustrated." — True Education. 

METHODS IN ZOOLOGY TEACHING FOR BEGINNERS 

For Teachers in Common Schools By Walter P. Manton M.D. author 

of "Field Botany" "Insects" "Beginnings with the Microscope' 

" Taxidermy" Cloth 50 cents 

Dr. Manton has been very successful in his practical helps in various 

branches of study, and this manual will prove welcome to all interested in this 

subject The book is clearly and concisely written, and the directions are plain 

and to the point, the difTferent instruments and tools necessary being fully 

illustrated and explained. 

HOW SHALL MY CHILD BE TAUGHT? 

Practical Pedagogy or the Science of Teaching Illustrated By Louis.'^ 
Parsons Hopkins Supervisor in Boston Public Schools Cloth $1.00 net 

"The Boston Herald " says: " Mrs. Louisa Parsons Hopkins has made a 
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service to those who are engaged in the tasks of primary teaching. She is less 
didactic than experimental in her methods; but the points wl'.ich she makes 
are those that lead to success, because they have been proved in the school* 
room, and have the authority of the great schoolmasters of modern times." 

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THE. Plements- OF- Psychology 



By GABRIEL COMPAYRE 

Translated by William H. Payne, Ph.D., LL.D., 

Chancellor of the University of Nashville, and President of the 

Peabody Normal College 

Price, $1.00 Net by mail, $1.10 

"Phis work is scholarly without many technicalities; it is modern 
without the conceit of 'newness;- it is comprehensive without being 
vague; it contains only the essentials without eliminating the essential 
of vivacitv; it gives the results of research without the tedious details of 
scientific investigation; it has the inspiration that disseminates psycho- 
logical truth; it is readily intelligible, and does not require any ' exlraor- 
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not an encyclopaedia of psychological science, and yet it is a treasury of 
the most important results of the best thinking; it is not designed for 
the specialist, and yet it commands the respect of specialists." — jfoiirnal 
of Education. 

O BSERVATION ••• QRIMARY --- 
••• lEssoNSiNTHE \ Schools 

By LOUISA P. HOPKINS, 

'>upervisor of Elementary Science in Boston Public Schools 

Parts 1 , 2, 3 & 4. Price, 20 cents net per part. 

Complete in one volume, cloth, 75 cents net. 

ONE of the well-establ'shed prmciples in modern methods of impart- 
ing instruction to the young is embodied in tlicse useful educational 
works by Mrs. Hopkins, namely: Seeing an object helps to think 
about it, and develops the power of expression. These observation 
and elementary science lessons have for their tirst object the Cultivation 
of the Powers of Observation. Parts i, 2, and 3 in the interesting 
and valuable series are already published, and include within their range 
of primary instruction suggestions on " Education through Self-Activity 
in Observation, Thought, and Expression; " giving " General Directions 
for Lessons," the " Programme for the Work in Boston Public Schools; " 
"Suggestions for Lessons to Develop Ideas of Color;" "Lessons on 
Form ; " " Lessons to Develop Ideas of Place ; " " Suggestions for Les- 
sons to Develop Ideas of Size," to develop " Qualities of Objects," etc. 
Part 2 treats of suggestions as to how to impart instruction on Plant Life 
and Animal Life, giving examples indicating how to utilize out-door 
material in the school-room; model lessons with reference to "Observa- 
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ness and detail how the child should be taught. Part 3 " Piiysical Phe- 
nomena of Nature; the Human Body." These elementary books are 
in harmony with the advanced intelligence displayed in t'^e highest 
ciiucational methods employed, and are of inestimable value to tlie 
progressive teacher in meeting the actual requirements of our time. 



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!1FE fUD WORKS OF ♦ ....... 

HORACE MANN 






Containing the Life by Mrs. Mary Mann, and Lectures. 
Reports, Essays, and Miscellaneous Papers, edited by his 
son, George Combe Mann. Library edition, five vol- 
umes Crown 8vo, cloth Price, $12.50 per set, net 
Separate volumes, $2.50 each, net. 



In response to a continuing demand for the educational 
writings of Horace Mann, an enlarged and complete edition 
is announced, consisting of his Life, by his widow, and four 
volumes of his works, edited by his son, George C. Mann 
Soon after Mr. Mann's death two volumes were pubh'shed, 
containing " Lectures on Education " and " Annual Reports " 
as Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, 
which are included in this edition. The collection is 
enlarged by the addition of a large amount of material, 
including the Eighth Report, omitted from the previous 
edition, copious extracts from the " Common School Jour- 
nal," on Education, and numerous orations and addresses, 
together with an excellent review of Mr. Mann's life and 
ivorks, from the Revue Pedagogique. 

These volumes are submitted to the public with the con- 
viction that, after the lapse of half a century, their contents 
will offer a guide and an inspiration towards the noble work of 
raising humanity to the capacity for self-government through 
education. 

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n • • -^"^ • nEOGRAPHlCAL 
'UGIUPQUE*[J***READER 



n 



In Four Fully Illustrated Volumes 

By CHAS, F. KING 

Master Dearborn Grammar School, Boston ; President National Summer School, 
Saratoga Springs; Author of " Methods and Aids in Geography " 

First Book: HOME AND SCHOOL. 

240 pages. Over 125 Illustrations. Price, 50 cents net. By mail, 55 cents. 

Second Book: THIS CONTINENT OF OURS. 

320 pages. Fully Illustrated, Price, 72 cents net. By mail, 83 cents. 
Sight takes the lead as a cha7inel of perceptiofi. — Spen'cer. 

Third Book: THE LAND WE LIVE IN. 

240 pages. 153 Illustrations. Price, 56 cents net. By mail, 64 cents. 

True concepts of real geography can only be formed through travel or from 
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m the pictures produced by the photographic camera. The photographer has 
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Supplementary reading is in great demand, but only books which combine the 
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POINTS OF SUPERIORITY 

1 Ample use of pictures — over loo Jarge and elegant pictures in Vol. i. 6oo 

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3 Written in narrative style. 

4 Language adapted to children's comprehension. 

5 Carefully prepared by personal narrative, wise selection, and adaptation. 

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8 Containing a vast amount of information for old and young, for teacher and 

taught. 

9 A happy combination of the useful and interesting. 

10 From these readers can be easily taught Geography, Reading, Spelling, 

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11 All mere map explanations and descriptions carefully avoided. 

12 Costly in preparation, but cheap in price. 

13 These books can be used in place of, or in connection with, geographies. 

14 These fascinating geographical readers will take the place of the stupid sets 

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0_^_oF^^H V HISTORY 

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First Series 
STORIES ^- ^ AMERICAN HISTORY. By N. S. Dodgh 
As a reading-book for the younger classes in public and private schools 
(by many of which it has been adopted;, it will be found of great value, 

*' Nobody knows better than the author how to make a good story out 
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Second Series 

NOBLE DEEDS OF OUR FATHERS. As Told by Soldiers 
of the Revolution gathered around the Old Bell of Independence. 
Revised and adapted from Henry C. Watson 

"Every phase of the struggle is presented, and the moral and 
religious character of our forefathers, even when engaged in deadly con- 
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of the patiiotic women of that day, stories of adventure regarding Gen. 
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Gen. Prescott, and in other narratives equally interesting and important." 
— Norzvich Bulletin 

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THE BOSTON TEA PARTY and other Stories of 
the Revolution. Relating many Daring Deeds of the Old 
Heroes. By Henry C. Watson 

" The tales are full of interesting material, they are told in a very 
graphic manner, and give many incidents of personal daring and descrip- 
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it is presented with so much brightness and color." — Philadelphia Record, 

STORIES OF THE CIVIL WAR. By Albert F. Blats, 
DELL, A.M., author of " First Steps with American and British 
Authors," " Readings from the Waverley Novels," " BJaisdell's 
Physiologies," etc. Illustrated. Library Edition, Cloth, $i.oo. 
School Edition, Boards, 30 cents, net; by mail, 35 cents 

An exceedingly interesting collection of true stories of thrilling 
eventsand adventures of the brave inenwho fought during the Ci\il War. 
The author aims to present recitals of gr;ipliic interest and founded on 
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for our beloved haul and its institutions, in the character of the selections 
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